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7.: Einhard’s Life of Karl the Great. - Oliver J. Thatcher, A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age [1905]

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A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age, ed. Oliver J. Thatcher and Edgar Holmes McNeal (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905).

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7.

Einhard’s Life of Karl the Great.

Einhard, who lived about 770 to 840, was a scholar, and a member of the court and the circle of Karl the Great. His biography of Karl is the most reliable and intimate account of the life and the character of the emperor that we possess.

3. After ruling as king of the Franks for fifteen years, Pippin died at Paris, leaving two sons to succeed him, Karl and Karlmann. . . . Karlmann, however, died after two years of joint rule, and Karl became king of all the Franks.

5. The first of his wars was that against the duke of Aquitaine,1 which was begun but not completed by his father. Karl had asked his brother to aid him in this undertaking, but Karlmann had failed to send the help which he had promised. Karl, however, undertook the war alone and carried it through successfully. Hunold, who had tried to recover the duchy of Aquitaine after the death of Waifer, was driven out of the province and forced to take refuge in Gascony. But Karl advanced across the Garonne, threatening Lupus, the duke of Gascony, with war unless he should surrender the fugitive. Thereupon Lupus not only gave up Hunold, but acknowledged the authority of Karl over his own duchy as well.

6. After the pacification of Aquitaine and the death of his brother, Karl made war on the Lombards in response to the prayer of Adrian, bishop of Rome. His father Pippin had also attacked the Lombards in the time of king Aistulf, at the request of pope Stephen, . . . but had been content with besieging Aistulf in Ticino and securing pledges that he would restore the places which he had taken and would never renew his attack upon Rome. Karl went further: he overthrew Desiderius, king of the Lombards, and drove his son Adalgisus out of Italy; restored to the Romans their possessions; defeated a new rising under Radegaisus, duke of Friuli; and subjugated all of Italy, making his son Pippin king.2

7. Then Karl returned to the attack which he had been making upon the Saxons3 and which had been interrupted by the Lombard invasion. This was the longest and most severe of all his wars, for the Saxons, being barbarians and pagans like most of the tribes in Germany, were bound by the laws neither of humanity nor of religion. For a long time there had been continual disturbances along the border, since there was no natural barrier marking the boundary between the two races, except in a few places where there were heavier forests or mountains. So the Franks and the Saxons were accustomed to make almost daily raids on the territory of each other, burning, devastating, and slaying. Finally the Franks determined to put an end to this condition of affairs by conquering the Saxons. In this way that war was begun which was waged continually for thirty-three years, and which was characterized by the most violent animosity on both sides, although the Saxons suffered the greater damage. The final conquest of the Saxons would have been accomplished sooner but for their treachery. It is hard to tell how often they broke faith; surrendering to the king and accepting his terms, giving hostages and promising to accept the Christian faith and abandon their idols, and then breaking out into revolt again. This happened in almost every year of that war, but the determination of the king could not be overcome by the difficulties of the undertaking nor by the treachery of the Saxons. He never allowed a revolt to go unpunished, but immediately led or sent an army into their territory to avenge it. Finally after all the warriors had been overthrown or forced to surrender to the king, he transplanted some ten thousand men with their wives and children, from their home on the Elbe, to Gaul and Germany, distributing them through these provinces. Thus they were brought to accept the terms of the king, agreeing to abandon their pagan faith and accept Christianity, and to be united to the Franks; and this war which had dragged on through so many years was brought to an end.

9. While this long war was going on, the king also made an expedition into Spain, leaving garrisons behind to hold the Saxons in check. Crossing the Pyrenees with a large army he conquered all the cities and fortresses in the region and returned safely with his whole army, except for those that were slain by the treachery of the Basques. For when the army was coming back through the passes of the Pyrenees, strung out in a long line of march because of the narrowness of the defiles, the Basques made a sudden attack upon the rear-guard, which was protecting the wagons and baggage of the army. The place was well suited to an ambuscade, being thickly wooded and very steep; the Basques suddenly rushed down from the heights where they had been hiding and fell upon the rear-guard and destroyed it to the last man, seizing the baggage and escaping under cover of the approaching night. . . . In this attack were slain Eggihard, the king’s seneschal, Anselm, count of the palace, and Hrotland, the warden of the marches of Brittany, along with many others. Up to the present time this attack has not been avenged, for the enemy dispersed so quickly that it was impossible to find them or to discover who were guilty.4

10. Karl also conquered the Bretons, a people dwelling in the remote western part of Gaul, along the shores of the ocean. . . . Then he again invaded Italy, this time marching through Rome to Capua, a city of Campania, and forcing the submission of Aragaisus, duke of Beneventum.

11. His next expedition was against Bavaria, which was soon reduced to subjection. This war was caused by the insubordination of duke Tassilo, whose wife, a daughter of Desiderius, urged him on to avenge the overthrow of her father. Tassilo made an alliance with the Huns, his neighbors, and prepared to attack the king. Karl, incensed at such presumption, immediately led an army in person to Bavaria, encamping on the river Lech, which separates Alamannia and Bavaria. Before invading the province he sent an embassy to the duke, who, seeing the hopelessness of attempting to oppose the king, immediately made his submission, offering hostages (among them his son Theodo) and swearing never again to revolt. Thus this war, which in the beginning threatened to be a serious affair, was brought to a rapid and successful conclusion.5 But the king later summoned Tassilo to his presence and kept him a prisoner, not permitting him to return to his duchy; and from that time on the province was not ruled by a duke, but was divided into counties over which Karl placed counts of his own choosing.

12. This rebellion having been put down, the king next made an attack upon a tribe of the Slavs, whom we call the Wiltzi, in their own tongue, Welatabi. . . . The cause of this war was the attacks which the Welatabi were making upon the Abodriti, who were formerly allies of the Franks, and their refusal to desist from these attacks at the command of the king. There is a great gulf [Baltic Sea] extending east from the western ocean [Atlantic], whose length is unknown, but whose width nowhere exceeds one hundred miles, and is in many places narrower. Many tribes dwell along its shores: on the northern shore and in the islands, the Danes and the Swedes, whom we call Northmen; on the southern shore, the Slavs and the Aisti, and other tribes, among whom are these Welatabi. These latter were defeated in a single campaign and have never dared to revolt again.

13. The greatest of all the wars of Karl except the Saxon war, was that against the Avars and the Huns. . . . The king himself led one expedition against them into Pannonia, where they dwelt, but intrusted the later ones to his son Pippin and to the dukes and counts of the neighboring regions. The war lasted for eight years, and the bloody character of it is shown by the fact that to-day Pannonia is uninhabited and the site of the Khan’s palace is a desert, containing no trace of former human habitation. The whole nobility of the Huns was destroyed in the course of this war, and all the treasure of the Avars carried away by the Franks.6 . . .

14. . . . His last war was waged against the Danes or Northmen. Beginning with small piratical raids, they had grown so bold that they attacked the shores of Gaul and Germany with large fleets, and their king, Godfrid, planned the conquest of Germany itself. He already claimed the Frisians and Saxons as his subjects, and had subjected the Abodriti and made them tributary. He even boasted that he would shortly proceed to Aachen and attack Karl himself. And indeed there was real danger that he might undertake this, but he was slain by one of his own followers and the danger passed.

15. These are the wars waged by this mighty king during the forty-seven years of his reign. Through his conquests the kingdom of the Franks as he had received it from his father Pippin was almost doubled in area. When he came to the throne it included only a part of Gaul and of Germany; in Gaul, that part bounded by the ocean [Atlantic], the Rhine, the Loire, and the Balearic Sea [Mediterranean]; in Germany, that part bounded by the Rhine, the Danube, the land of the Saxons, and the Saale, . . . with the overlordship of Bavaria and Alamannia. Karl added by his wars Aquitaine and Gascony; the Pyrenees and the land south to the Ebro; . . . all of Italy as far south as lower Calabria; . . . Saxony, which forms a considerable part of Germany; . . . Pannonia and Dacia; Istria, Liburnia, and Dalmatia, except the maritime cities which were allied with the emperor of Constantinople; and, finally, all the barbarous tribes inhabiting Germany, between the Rhine, the Danube, the Vistula, and the ocean [Baltic], . . . of whom the most important are the Welatabi, the Sorabi, the Abodriti, and the Bohemians.

16. The glory of his reign was also greatly enhanced by his alliances and friendships with foreign kings and peoples. Thus Aldefonso, king of Gallicia and Asturia,7 was his ally, and spoke of himself by letters and ambassadors as the man of Karl. The kings of the Scots also were wont to address him as master, calling themselves his subjects and servants, of which expressions there are evidences in letters still existing which they have written to him. He was also in close relations with Aaron [Haroun-al-Raschid],8 king of the Persians, who ruled almost all of the east outside of India, and who always expressed the greatest friendship and admiration for Karl. On one occasion, when Karl sent an embassy with gifts for the holy sepulchre of our Lord and Saviour, he not only permitted them to fulfil their mission, but even made a present of that holy spot to Karl, to rule as his own. And when the embassy of Karl returned, it was accompanied by ambassadors from Aaron, bearing presents of fine robes, spices, and other eastern treasures. A few years before he sent to Karl at his request an elephant which was the only one he at that time possessed. The emperors of Constantinople, Nicephorus, Michael, and Leo, were his friends and allies and sent many embassies to him. Even when they suspected him of desiring to seize their empire, because he took the title of emperor, they nevertheless entered into alliance with him, to avoid a rupture.

25. He was very eloquent and could express himself clearly on any subject. He spoke foreign languages besides his own tongue, and was so proficient in Latin that he used it as easily as his own language. Greek he could understand better than he could speak. . . . He was devoted to the study of the liberal arts and was a munificent patron of learned men. Grammar he learned from Peter, an aged deacon of Pisa; in the other studies his chief instructor was Alcuin, a Saxon from England, also a deacon, and the most learned man of his time. With him he studied rhetoric, dialectic, and especially astronomy. . . . He tried also to learn to write, keeping tablets under the pillow of his couch to practise on in his leisure hours. But he never succeeded very well, because he began too late in life.9

28. His last visit to Rome was made because the Romans had attacked and injured pope Leo, tearing out his eyes and tongue, and had thus forced the pope to call on the king for aid. And having come to Rome to restore the church which had greatly suffered during the strife, he remained there all winter. It was during this time that he received the title of emperor and Augustus, to which he was at first so averse, that he was wont to say that he would never have entered the church on that day, although it was a great feast day [Christmas], if he had foreseen the plan of the pope. But his great patience and magnanimity finally overcame the envy and hatred of the Roman emperors [of the east], who were indignant at his receiving the title. This he did by sending them frequent embassies and addressing them in his letters as brothers.10

29. After he became emperor he undertook a revision of the laws of his empire, which were very defective, for the Franks had two laws [Salic and Ripuarian] differing in many points from one another. But he was never able to do more than to complete the various laws with a few additional sections and cause all the unwritten laws to be put into writing. He also wrote down for preservation the ancient German songs, in which the wars and adventures of old heroes are celebrated. He began also to make a grammar of his native tongue. . . .

30. . . . While he was spending the winter in Aachen, he was taken with a severe fever, which the Greeks call pleurisy, and died there on Tuesday, the fifth of the Kalends of February [January 28], in the seventy-second year of his age and the forty-seventh of his reign.

31. On the same day his body was prepared for burial and borne to the church of the Virgin Mary, which he had founded, in the midst of the lamentation of all his people, and there laid to rest. Over his tomb was erected an arch, covered with gold, and having his image and this inscription on it: “Under this tomb lies the body of Karl, the great and orthodox emperor, who greatly increased the kingdom of the Franks and ruled gloriously for forty-seven years. He died when over seventy years of age, in the year of our Lord 814, the 7th indiction, on the fifth of the Kalends of February.”

[1 ] In the late Merovingian period the outlying parts of the kingdom had become practically independent under native rulers, called dukes. One of the first things undertaken by the rulers of the new line was the reduction of these great provinces to subjection as a necessary step in the restoration of the central authority. Much was accomplished in this direction by the mayors, Pippin the Younger (688-714) and Karl Martel (714-741), who attacked the Frisians, the dukes of Aquitaine, Bavaria, and Alamannia. But the work had to be done over and over, and indeed was never permanently accomplished. In Aquitaine Pippin the Short, king from 751 to 768, had several conflicts with the dukes of Aquitaine, Hunold and his son Waifer. This is the struggle which Karl brought to an end as here related.

[2 ] Pippin had begun his war upon the Lombards for the purpose of freeing the papal domains from their attacks. The Lombards had conceived the ambitious plan of possessing all Italy, and under their kings Liutprand, Aistulf, and Desiderius had begun to carry it out by attacking the exarchate of Ravenna and the lands held by the pope. Pippin had forced Aistulf to give up his conquests (chiefly the exarchate) and had given that territory to the pope (see no. 45). Karl was called into Italy to defend the pope against a new attack by Desiderius, and put a definite end to this danger by conquering the Lombard kingdom and adding it to his own rule. This is a further stage in the connection between the popes and the emperor, between Germany and Italy.

[3 ] The war against the Saxons and their conquest practically completed the unification of the German tribes on the continent, there remaining outside of the empire of Karl only the Scandinavian peoples in the north and the Angles and Saxons in England. By the conquest of the Saxons a vigorous race of pure German blood was added to the empire; their addition tended to increase the differences between the German and the Gallic portions of the empire, which was the natural basis of the division between France and Germany. The Saxons in the tenth and eleventh centuries were perhaps the chief race of the German kingdom, furnishing the rulers from the accession of Henry I in 919 to the death of Henry II in 1024. Karl’s insistence upon the conversion of the Saxons to Christianity is in line with the policy of his predecessors to Christianize all the Germans.

[4 ] The chief interest of this passage lies in the fact that it is the historical basis of the great French epic, the Chanson de Roland. Einhard mentions the death of three men in this attack as of special note; one of them was Hrotland, count of the mark of Brittany, the Roland of the poem.

[5 ] The overthrow of Tassilo, duke of Bavaria, is a part of the policy of Karl to reduce the great duchies to control. In order to keep these outlying provinces in subjection and to govern them efficiently Karl divided them into counties over which he placed officials dependent directly upon himself and not upon a duke. This policy was carried out in Alamannia, Aquitaine, and Saxony as well, the purpose being to prevent the formation of independent power in the large divisions of the empire. It was successful under Karl, but later the civil wars among his descendants gave opportunity for the rise of similar great rulers in the same provinces (see nos. 24 and 25).

[6 ] The Avars had come into Europe in the middle of the sixth century, along the Danube. After the Lombards moved into Italy the Avars occupied the whole Danube valley from Vienna to the mouth of the river. The kingdom of the Khan of the Avars probably included the remnants of the Hunnish empire and of the German tribes that had been subject to the Huns.

[7 ] The kingdom of Gallicia and Asturia was one of the small Christian states in Spain composed of the former inhabitants that had retreated in large numbers to the mountains in the north and west at the time of the Mohammedan invasion (711-720). From these regions they later slowly won back the land from the Mohammedans.

[8 ] Haroun-al-Raschid was Caliph of the Mohammedan world from 786-809, with his capital at Bagdad. His caliphate is the golden age of the Mohammedans reflected in the “Arabian Nights.” The connection of Karl with Haroun and especially the negotiations mentioned here in regard to Jerusalem gave rise to the later legends concerning the crusades of Karl.

[9 ] The reign of Karl is sometimes spoken of as the Carolingian Renaissance, because of the revived interest in letters and learning that took its impulse from the court of Karl. Here was the famous “palace school” that included such persons as Alcuin, Angilbert, Einhard, Peter of Pisa, Paul the Lombard, etc. The results of the movement were seen in the writings of the time: Einhard’s Annals and Vita; the History of the Lombards, by Paul; the poems and letters of Angilbert, etc.; in the formation of the monastery and cathedral schools, and the better learning of the monks and clergy; in the attempts of Karl to revise the texts of the Scriptures and to make new text-books; and in the theological discussions of the ninth century. Evidences of this movement are seen also in some of the letters of Karl that are translated below.

[10 ] See the note on the coronation of Karl, no. 8. The statement of Einhard that Karl was displeased at this action of the pope has caused considerable discussion; the reason probably was that he was unwilling to arouse the ill-will of the eastern emperors, who would undoubtedly regard the assumption of the imperial crown by Karl as an infringement of their authority and position. See also nos. 13 and 14.