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Notes To Book I: Part I}
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Title:       History Of Europe During The Middle Ages
Book:        Book I: The History Of France
Author:      Hallam, Henry

Notes To Book I: Part I

Note I

     The evidence of Zosimus, which is the basis of this theory of Dubos,
cannot be called very slight.  Early in the fifth century, according to him,
about the time when Constantine usurped the throne of Britain and Gaul, or, as
the sense shows, a little later, in consequence of the incursions of the
barbarians from beyond the Rhine, the natives of Britain, taking up arms for
themselves, rescued their cities from these barbarians; and the whole
Armorican territory, and other provinces of Gaul, in imitation of the Britons,
liberated themselves in the same manner, expelling the Roman rulers, and
establishing an internal government: Lib. vi. c. 5.  Guizot gives so much
authority to this as to say of the Armoricans, "Ils se maintinrent toujours
libres, entre les barbares et les Romains." Introduction a la Collection des
Memoires, vol. i. p. 336.  Sismondi pays little regard to it.  The proofs
alleged by Daru for the existence of a king of Brittany named Conan, early in
the fifth century, would throw much doubt on the Armorican republic; but they
seem to me rather weak.  Brittany, it may be observed by the way, was never
subject to the Merovingian kings, except sometimes in name. Dubos does not
think it probable that there was any central authority in what he calls the
Armorican confederacy, but conceives the cities to have acted as independent
states during the greater part of the fifth century. (Hist. de
l'Etablissement, &c., vol. i. p. 338.) He gives, however, an enormous extent
to Armorica, supposing it to have comprised Aquitaine. But, though the
contrary has been proved, it is to be observed that Zosimus mentions other
provinces of Gaul, as well as Armorica. Procopius, by the word 'A, seems to
indicate all the inhabitants at least of Northern Gaul; but the passage is so
ambiguous, and his acquaintance with that history so questionable, that little
can be inferred from it with any confidence.  On the whole, the history of
Northern Gaul in the fifth century is extremely obscure, and the trustworthy
evidence very scanty.

     Sismondi (Hist. des Francais, vol. i. p. 134) has a good passage, which
it will be desirable to keep in mind when we launch into mediaeval
antiquities: - "Ce peu des mots a donne matiere a d'amples commentaires, et au
developpement de beaucoup de conjectures ingenieuses.  L'abbe Dubos, en
expliquant le silence des historiens, a fonde sur des sousentendus une
histoire assez complete de la republique Armorique.  Nous serons souvent
appeles a nous tenir en garde contre le zele des ecrivains qui ne satisfait
point l'aridite de nos chroniques, et qui y suppleent par des divinations.
Plus d'une fois le lecteur pourra etre surpris en voyant a combien peu se
reduit ce que nous savons reellement sur un evenement assez celebre pour avoir
motive de gros livres."

Note II

     The Franks are not among the German tribes mentioned by Tacitus, nor do
they appear in history before the year 240.  Guizot accedes to the opinion
that they were a confederation of the tribes situated between the Rhine, the
Weser, and the Main; as the Alemanni were a similar league to the south of the
last river. ^a Their origin may be derived from the necessity of defending
their independence against Rome; but they had become the aggressors in the
period when we read of them in Roman history; and, like other barbarians in
that age, were often the purchased allies of the declining empire.  Their
history is briefly sketched by Guizot (Essais sur l'Histoire de France, p.
53), and more copiously by other antiquarians, among whom M. Lehuerou, the
latest and not the least original or ingenious, conceives them to have been a
race of exiles or outlaws from other German tribes, taking the name Franc from
frech, fierce or bold, ^b and settling at first, by necessity, near the mouth
of the Elbe, whence they moved onward to seek better habitations at the
expense of less intrepid, though more civilized, nations.  "Et ainsi naquit la
premiere nation de l'Europe moderne." ^c Institutions Merovingiennes, vol. i.
p. 91.

[Footnote a: Alemanni is generally supposed to mean "all men." Meyer, however,
takes it for another form of Arimanni, from Heermanner, soldiers. - Nouveaux
Memoires de l'Academie de Bruxelles, vol. iii. p. 439.]

[Footnote b: This etymology had been given by Thierry, or was of older
origin.]

[Footnote c: As M. Lehuerou belongs to what is called the Roman school of
French antiquaries, he should not have brought the nation from beyond the
Rhine.]

     An earlier writer considers the Franks as a branch of the great stock of
the Suevi, mentioned by Tacitus, who, he tells us, "majorem Germaniae partem
obtinent, propriis adhuc nationibus nominibusque discreti, quanquam in communi
Suevi dicuntur.  Insigne gentis obliquare crinem, nodoque substringere." De
Moribus German. c. 38.  Ammianus mentions the Salian Franks by name: "Francos
eos quos consuetudo Salios appellavit." See a memoir in the Transactions of
the Academy of Brussels, 1824, by M. Devez, "sur l'etablissement des Francs
dans la Belgique."

     In the great battle of Chalons, the Franks fought on the Roman side
against Attila; and we find them mentioned several times in the history of
Northern Gaul from that time.  Lehuerou (Institutions Merovingiennes, c. II)
endeavors to prove, as Dubos had done, that they were settled in Gaul, far
beyond Tournay and Cambray, under Meroveus and Childeric, though as subjects
of the empire; and Luden conjectures that the whole country between the
Moselle and the Somme had fallen into their hands even as early as the reign
of Honorius.  (Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes, vol. ii. p. 381.) This is one
of the obscure and debated points in early French history.  But the seat of
the monarchy appears clearly to have been established at Cambray before the
middle of the fifth century.

Note III

     This theory, which is partly countenanced by Gibbon, has lately been
revived, in almost its fullest extent, by a learned and spirited investigator
of early history, Sir Francis Palgrave, in his Rise and Progress of the
English Commonwealth, i. 360; and it seems much in favor with M. Raynouard, in
his Histoire du Droit Municipal en France.  M. Lehuerou, in a late work
(Histoire des Institutions Merovingiennes et Carolingiennes, 2 vols., 1843),
has in a great measure adopted it: - "Nous croyons devoir declarer que, dans
notre opinion, le livre de Dubos, malgre les erreurs trop reelles qui le
deparent, et l'esprit de systeme qui en a considerablement exagere les
consequences, est, de tous ceux qui ont aborde le meme probleme au xviii ^me
siecle, celui ou la question des origines Merovingiennes se trouve le plus
pres de la veritable solution. Cet aveu nous dispense de detailler plus
longuement les obligations que nous lui avons.  Elles se reveleront d'ailleurs
suffisamment d'elles-memes." (Introduction, p. xi.) M. Lehuerou does not,
however, follow his celebrated guide so far as to overlook the necessary
connection between barbarian force and its aggressive character.  The final
establishment of the Franks in Gaul, according to him, rested partly on the
concession and consent of the emperors, who had invited them to their service,
and rewarded them, as he conceives, with lands, while the progenitors of
Clovis bore the royal name, partly on their own encroachments, and especially
on the victory of that prince over Syagrius in 486.  (Vol. i. p. 228.)

     It may be alleged against Dubos that Clovis advanced into the heart of
Gaul as an invader; that he defeated in battle the lieutenant of the emperor,
if Syagrius were such; or, if we chose to consider him as independent, which
probably in terms he was not, that the emperors of Constantinople could merely
have relinquished their authority, because they had not the strength to
enforce it. Gaul, like Britain, in that age, had become almost a sort of
derelict possession, to be seized by the occupant; but the title of occupancy
is not that of succession.  It may be true that the Roman subjects of Clovis
paid him a ready allegiance; yet still they had no alternative but to obey.

     Twenty-five years elapsed, during which the kingdom of the Salian Franks
was prodigiously aggrandized by the submission of all Northern Gaul, by the
reduction of the Alemanni on the right bank of the Rhine, and by the overthrow
of the Visigoths at Vougle, which brought almost the whole of the south into
subjection to Clovis.  It is not disputed by any one that he reigned and
conquered in his own right.  No one has alleged that he founded his great
dominion on any other title than that of the sword, which his Frank people
alone enabled him to sustain.  But about two years before his death, as
Gregory of Tours relates, the emperor Anastasius bestowed upon him the dignity
of consul; and this has been eagerly caught at by the school of Dubos as a
fact of high importance, and as establishing a positive right of sovereignty,
at least over the Romans - that is, the provincial inhabitants of Gaul, which
descended to the long line of the Merovingian house.  Sir Francis Palgrave,
indeed, more strongly than Dubos himself, seems to consider the French
monarchy as deriving its pedigree from Rome rather than the Elbe.

     The first question that must naturally arise is as to the value
assignable to the evidence of Gregory of Tours respecting the gift of
Anastasius.  Some might hesitate, at least, to accept the story in all its
circumstances.  Gregory is neither a contemporary nor, in such a point, an
altogether trustworthy witness.  His style is verbose and rhetorical; and,
even in matters of positive history, scanty as are our means of refuting him,
he has sometimes exposed his ignorance, and more often given a tone of
improbability to his narrative.  An instance of the former occurs in his third
book, respecting the death of the widow of Theodoric, contradicted by known
history; and for the latter we may refer to the language he puts into the
mouth of Clotilda, who urges her husband to the worship of Mars and Mercury,
divinities of whom he had never heard.

     The main fact, however, that Anastasius conferred the dignity of consul
upon Clovis, cannot be rejected.  Although it has been alleged that his name
does not occur in the Consular Fasti, this seems of no great importance, since
the title was merely an honorary distinction, not connecting him with the
empire as its subject.  Guizot, indeed, and Sismondi conceive that he was only
invested with the consular robe, according to what they take to have been the
usage of the Byzantine court. But Gregory, by the words codicillos de
consulatu, seems to imply a formal grant.  Nor does the fact rest solely on
his evidence, though his residence at Tours would put him in possession of the
local tradition. Hincmar, the famous bishop of Rheims, has left a Life of St.
Remy, by whom Clovis was baptized; and, though he wrote in the ninth century,
he had seen extracts from a contemporary Life of that saint, not then, he
says, entirely extant, which Life may reasonably be thought to have furnished
the substance of the second book of Gregory's history.  We find in Hincmar the
language of Gregory on the consulship of Clovis, with a little difference of
expression: - "Cum quibus codicillis etiam illi Anastasius coronam auream cum
gemmis, et tunicam blateam misit, et ab ea die consul et Augustus est
appellatus." (Rec. des Hist. vol. iii. p. 379.) Now, the words of Gregory are
the following: "Igitur ab Anastasio imperatore codicillos de consulatu
accepit, et in basilica beati Martini tunica blatea indutus est et clamyde,
imponens vertici diadema.  Tunc ascenso equite, aurum, argentumque in itinere
illo, quod inter portam atrii basilicae beati Martini et ecclesiam civitatis
est, praesentibus populis manu propria spargens, voluntate benignissima
erogavit, et ab ea die tanquam consul aut Augustus est vocitatus." The
minuteness of local description implies the tradition of the city of Tours,
which Gregory would, of course, know, and renders all scepticism as to the
main story very unreasonable.  Thus, if we suppose the Life of St. Remy to
have been the original authority, Anastasius will have sent a crown to Clovis.
And this would explain the words of Gregory, "imponens vertici diadema." Such
an addition to the dignity of consul is, doubtless, remarkable, and might of
itself lead us to infer that the latter was not meant in its usual sense.
This passage is in other respects more precise than in Gregory; it has not the
indefinite and almost unintelligible words tamquam consul, and has et instead
of aut Augustus; which latter conjunction, however, in low Latin, is often put
for the former.

     But, though the historical evidence is considerably strengthened by the
supposition that Gregory copied a Life of St. Remigius of nearly contemporary
date with the event, we do not find all our difficulty removed so as to render
it implicit credence in every particular.  That Clovis would be called consul
by the provincial Romans after he had received the title from Anastasius is
very natural; that he was ever called, even by them, Augustus - that is,
Emperor - except perhaps in a momentary acclamation, we may not unreasonably
scruple to believe.  The imperial title would hardly be assumed by one who
pretended only to a local sovereignty; nor is such a usurpation consistent
with the theory that the Frank chieftain was on terms of friendship with the
court of Constantinople, and in subordination to it.  One or other hypothesis
must surely be rejected.  If Clovis was called emperor (and when did Augustus
bear any other meaning?) he was no vicegerent of Anastasius, no consul of the
empire.  But the most material observations that arise are: first, that the
dignity of consul was merely personal, and we have not the slightest evidence
that any of the posterity of Clovis either acquired or assumed it; secondly,
that the Franks alone were the source of power to the house of Meroveus.  "The
actual and legal authority of Clovis," says Gibbon, "could not receive any new
accession from the consular dignity. It was a name, a shadow, an empty
pageant; and, if the conqueror had been instructed to claim the ancient
prerogatives of that high office, they must have expired with the period of
its annual duration.  But the Romans were disposed to revere in the person of
their master that antique title which the emperors condescended to assume; the
barbarian himself seemed to contract a sacred obligation to respect the
majesty of the republic; and the successors of Theodosius, by soliciting his
friendship, tacitly forgave and almost ratified the usurpation of Gaul."
(Chap. xxxviii.) It does not appear to me, therefore, very material toward the
understanding French history, what was the intention of Anastasius in
conferring the name of consul on the king of the Franks.  It was a token of
amity, no doubt; a pledge, perhaps, that the court of Constantinople renounced
the hope of asserting its pretensions to govern a province so irrecoverably
separated from it as Gaul; but were it even the absolute cession of a right,
which, by the usual law of nations, required something far more explicit, it
would not affect in any degree the real authority which Clovis had won by the
sword, and had exercised for more than twenty years over the unresisting
subjects of the Roman empire.

     A different argument for the theory of devolution of power from the
Byzantine emperor on the Franks is founded on the cession of Justinian to
Theodebert, king of Austrasia, in 540.  Provence, which continued in the
possession of the emperors for some time after the conquest of Gaul by Clovis,
had fallen into the hands of the Ostrogoths, then masters of Italy.  The
alliance of the Frank king was sought by both parties, at the price of what
one enjoyed and the other claimed - Provence, with its wealthy cities of
Marseilles and Arles.  Theodebert was no very good ally, either to the Greeks
or the Goths; but he occupied the territory, and after a few years it was
formally ceded to him by Justinian.  "That emperor," in the words of Gibbon,
who has not told the history very exactly, "generously yielding to the Franks
the sovereignty of the countries beyond the Alps which they already possessed,
absolved the provincials from their allegiance, and established, on a more
lawful, though not more solid, foundation, the throne of the Merovingians."
Procopius, in his Greek vanity, pretends that the Franks never thought
themselves secure of Gaul until they obtained this sanction from the emperor.
"This strong declaration of Procopius," says Gibbon, "would almost suffice to
justify the abbe Dubos." I cannot, however, rate the courage of that people so
low as to believe that they feared the armies of Justinian, which they had
lately put to flight in Italy; nor do I know that a title of sixty years'
possession gains much legality by the cession of one who had asserted no claim
during that period.  Constantinople had tacitly renounced the western
provinces of Rome by her inability to maintain them.  I must, moreover,
express some doubt whether Procopius ever meant to say that Justinian
confirmed to the Frank sovereign his rights over the whole of Gaul.  Gibbon,
on the authority of Procopius, goes on to say that the gold coin of the
Merovingian kings, "by a singular privilege, which was denied to the Persian
monarch, obtained a legal currency in the empire." But this legal currency is
not distinctly mentioned by Procopius, though he strangely asserts that it was
not lawful, for the king of Persia to coin gold with his own effigy, as if the
<greek spelling> of Constantinople were regarded at Seleucia.  There is reason
to believe that the Goths, as well as Franks, coined gold, which might
possibly circulate in the empire, without having, strictly speaking, a legal
currency.  The expressions of Agathias, quoted above, that the Franks had
nearly the same form of government, and the same laws, as the Romans, may be
understood as a mistaken view of what Procopius says in a passage which will
be hereafter quoted, and which Agathias, a later writer, perhaps, has
followed, that the Roman inhabitants of Gaul retained their institutions under
the Franks; which was certainly true, though by no means more so than under
the Visigoths.

Note IV

     It ought, perhaps, to be observed, that no period of ecclesiastical
history, especially in France, has supplied more saints to the calendar. It is
the golden age of hagiology.  Thirty French bishops, under Clovis and his sons
alone, are venerated in the Roman church; and not less than seventy-one
saints, during the same short period, have supplied some historical
information, through their Lives in Acta Sanctorum. "The foundation of half
the French churches," says Sismondi, "dates from that epoch." (Vol. i. p.
308.) Nor was the seventh century much less productive of that harvest.  Of
the service which the Lives of the Saints have rendered to history, as well as
of the incredible deficiencies of its ordinary sources, some notion may be
gained by the strange fact mentioned in Sismondi, that a king of Austrasia,
Dagobert II., was wholly overlooked by historians; and his reign, from 674 to
678, only retrieved by some learned men in the seventeenth century, through
the Life of our Saint Wilfred, who had passed through France on his way to
Rome.  (Hist. des Francais, vol. ii. p. 51.) But there is a diploma of this
prince in Rec. des Hist. vol. iv. p. 685.

     Sismondi is too severe a censurer of the religious sentiment which
actuated the men of this period.  It did not prevent crimes, even in those,
frequently, who were penetrated by it.  But we cannot impute to the ascetic
superstition of the sixth and seventh centuries, as we may to the persecuting
spirit of later ages, that it occasioned them - crimes, at least, which stand
forth in history; for to fraud and falsehood it, no question, lent its aid.
The Lives of the Saints, amid all the mass of falsehood and superstition which
incrusts them, bear witness not only to an intense piety, which no one will
dispute, but to much of charity and mercy toward man.  But, even if we should
often doubt particular facts from slenderness of proof, they are at least such
as the compilers of these legends thought praiseworthy, and such as the
readers of them would be encouraged to imitate. ^d

[See Lives Of The Saints: Illumination depicting the religious sentiment which
actuated the men of the period.]

[Footnote d: M. Ampere has well observed that it was not the mere interest of
the story, nor even the ideal morality, which constituted the principal charm
of the legends of saints; it was the constant idea of Providence supporting
the faithful in those troublous times, and of saints always interfering in
favor of the innocent. - Hist. Litt. de la France avant le 12ieme siecle, ii.
360.]

     St. Bathilda, of Anglo-Saxon birth, queen of Clovis II., redeeming her
countrymen from servitude, to which the barbarous manners of their own people
frequently exposed them, is in some measure a set-off against the tyrant
princes of the family into which she had come.  And many other instances of
similar virtue are attested with reasonable probability. Sismondi never fully
learned to judge men according to a subjective standard - that is, their own
notions of right and wrong; nor even to perceive the immediate good
consequences of many principles, as well as social institutions connected with
them, which we would no more willingly tolerate at present than himself.  In
this respect Guizot has displayed a more philosophical temper.  Still there
may be some caution necessary not to carry this subjective estimate of human
actions too far, lest we lose sight of their intrinsic quality.

     We have, unfortunately, to set against the saintly legends an enormous
mass of better-attested crimes, especially of oppression and cruelty.  Perhaps
there is hardly any history extending over a century which records so much of
this with so little information of any virtue, any public spirit, any wisdom,
as the ten books of Gregory of Tours.  The seventh century has no historian
equally circumstantial; but the tale of the seventh century is in substance
the same.  The Roman fraud and perfidy mingled, in baleful confluence, with
the ferocity and violence of the Frank.

     Those wild men's vices they receiv'd,
     And gave them back their own.

If the church was deeply tainted with both these classes of crime, it was at
least less so, especially with the latter, than the rest of the nation. A
saint might have many faults; but it is strongly to be presumed that mankind
did not canonize such monsters as the kings and nobles of whom we read almost
exclusively in Gregory of Tours.  A late writer, actuated by the hatred of
antiquity, and especially of kings, nobles, and priests, which is too much the
popular creed of France, has collected from age to age every testimony to the
wickedness of the powerful.  His proofs are one-sided, and, consequently,
there is some unfairness in the conclusions; but the facts are, for the most
part, irresistibly true.  (Dulaure, Hist. de Paris, passim.)

Note V

     The Mayor of the Palace appears as the first officer of the crown in the
three Frank kingdoms during the latter half of the sixth century.  He had the
command, as Guizot supposes, of the Antrustions, or vassals of the king.  Even
afterwards the office was not, as this writer believes, properly elective,
though in the case of a minority of the king, or upon other special occasions,
the leudes, or nobles, chose a mayor.  The first instance we find of such an
election was in 575, when, after the murder of Sigebert by Fredegonde, his son
Childebert being an infant, the Austrasian leudes chose Gogon for their mayor.
There seem, however, so many instances of elective mayors in the seventh
century, that, although the royal consent may probably have been legally
requisite, it is hard to doubt that the office had fallen into the hands of
the nobles.  Thus, in 641: - "Flaochatus, genere Francus, major-domus in
regnum Burgundiae, electione pontificum et cunctorum ducum a Nantechilde
regina in hunc gradum honoris nobiliter stabilitur." (Fredegar. Chron. c. 89.)
And on the election of Ebroin: - "Franci in incertum vacillantes, accepto
consilio, Ebruinum in hujus honoris curam ac dignitatem statuunt." (c. 92.) On
the death of Ebroin in 681, "Franci Warratonem virum illustrem in locum ejus
cum jussione regis majoremdomus palatio constituunt." These two instances were
in Neustria; the aristocratic power was still greater in the other parts of
the monarchy.

     Sismondi adopts a very different theory, clinging a little too much to
the democratic visions of Mably.  "If we knew better," he says, "the
constitution of the monarchy, perhaps we might find that the mayor, like the
Justiciary of Aragon, was the representative, not of the great, but of the
freemen, and taken generally from the second rank in society, charged to
repress the excesses of the aristocracy as well as of the crown." (Hist. des
Francais, vol. ii. p. 4.) Nothing appears to warrant this vague conjecture,
which Guizot wholly rejects, as he does also the derivation of major-domus
from morddohmen, a verb signifying to sentence to death, which Sismondi brings
forward to sustain his fanciful analogy to the Aragonese justiciary.

     The hypothesis, indeed, that the mayor of the palace was chosen out of
the common freeholders, and not the highest class, is not only contrary to
everything we read of the aristocratical denomination in the Merovingian
kingdoms, but to a passage in Fredegarius, to which probably others might be
added.  Protadius, he informs us, a mayor of Brunehaut's choice, endeavored to
oppress all men of high birth, that no one might be found capable of holding
the charge in his room (c. 27).  This, indeed, was in the sixth century,
before any sort of election was known.  But in the seventh the power of the
great, and not of the people, meets us at every turn.  Mably himself would
have owned that his democracy had then ceased to exercise any power.

     The Austrasian mayors of the palace were, from the reign of Clotaire II.,
men of great power, and taken from the house of Pepin of Landen. They carried
forward, ultimately for their own aggrandizement, the aristocratic system
which had overturned Brunehaut.  Ebroin, on the other hand, in Neustria, must
be considered as keeping up the struggle of the royal authority, which he
exercised in the name of several phantoms of kings, against the encroachments
of the aristocracy, though he could not resist them with final success.
Sismondi (vol. ii. p. 64) fancies that Ebroin was a leader of the freemen
against the nobles.  But he finds a democratic party everywhere; and Guizot
justly questions the conjecture (Collection des Memoires, vol. ii. p. 320).
Sismondi, in consequence of this hypothesis, favors Ebroin; for whom it may be
alleged that we have no account of his character but from his enemies, chiefly
the biographer of St. Leger.  M. Lehuerou sums up his history with apparent
justice: - "Ainsi perit, apres une administration de vingt ans, un homme
remarquable a tous egards, mais que le triomphe de ses ennemis a failli
desheriter de sa gloire.  Ses violences sont peu douteuses, mais son genie ne
l'est pas davantage, et rien ne prouve mieux la terreur qu'il inspirait aux
Austrasiens que les injures qu'ils lui ont prodiguees." (Institutions
Carolingiennes, p. 281.)

Note VI

     Aribert, or rather Caribert, brother of Dagobert I., was declared king of
Aquitaine in 628; but on his death, in 631, it became a duchy dependent on the
monarchy under his two sons, with its capital at Toulouse.  This dependence,
however, appears to have soon ceased, in the decay of the Merovingian line;
and for a century afterwards Aquitaine can hardly be considered as part of
either the Neustrian or Austrasian kingdom.  "L'ancienne population Romaine
travaillait sans cesse a ressaisir son independance.  Les Francs avaient
conquis, mais ne possedaient vraiment pas ces contrees.  Des que leurs grandes
incursions cessaient, les villes et les campagnes se soulevaient, et se
confederaient pour secouer le joug." (Guizot, Cours d'Hist. Moderne, ii. 229.)
This important fact, though acknowledged in passing by most historians, has
been largely illustrated in the valuable Histoire de la Gaule Meridionale, by
M. Fauriel.

     Aquitaine, in its fullest extent, extended from the Loire beyond the
Garonne, with the exception of Touraine and the Orleannois.  The people of
Aquitaine, in this large sense of the word, were chiefly Romans, with a few
Goths.  The Franks, as a conquering nation, had scarcely taken up their abode
in those provinces.  But undoubtedly, the Merovingian kings possessed estates
in the south of France, which they liberally bestowed as benefices upon their
leudes, so that the chief men were frequently of Frank origin.  They threw
off, nevertheless, their hereditary attachments, and joined with the mass of
their new countrymen in striving for the independence of Aquitaine.  After the
battle of Testry, which subverted the Neustrian monarchy, Aquitaine, and even
Burgundy, ceased for a time to be French; under Charles Martel they were
styled the Roman countries. (Michelet, ii. 9.)

     Eudon, by some called Eudes, grandson of Caribert, a prince of
conspicuous qualities, gained ground upon the Franks during the whole period
of Pepin Heristal's power, and united to Aquitaine, not only Provence, but a
new conquest from the independent natives, Gascony.  Eudon obtained in 721 a
far greater victory over the Saracens than that of Charles Martel at Poitiers.
The slaughter was immense, and confessed by the Arabian writers; it even
appears that a funeral solemnity, in commemoration of so great a calamity, was
observed in Spain for four or five centuries afterwards.  (Fauriel, iii. 79.)
But in its consequences it was far less important; for the Saracens, some
years afterwards, returned to avenge their countrymen, and Eudon had no
resource but in the aid of Charles Martel.  After the retreat of the enemy it
became the necessary price of the service rendered by the Frank chieftain that
Aquitaine acknowledged his sovereignty.  This, however, was still but nominal,
till Pepin determined to assert it more seriously, and after a long war
overcame the last of the ducal line sprung from Clotaire II., which had
displayed, for almost a century and a half, an energy in contrast with the
imbecility of the elder branch.  Even this, as M. Fauriel observes, was little
more than a change in the reigning family; the men of Aquitaine never lost
their peculiar nationality; they remained a separate people in Gaul, a people
distinguished by their character, and by the part which they were called to
play in the political revolutions of the age.  (Vol. iii. 300.)