IX. The Mayors Of The Palace - The Pepins And The Change Of Dynasty

There is a certain amount of sound sense, of intelligent activity and practical efficiency, which even the least civilized and least exacting communities absolutely must look for in their governing body. When this necessary share of ability and influence of a political kind are decidedly wanting in the men who have the titles and the official posts of power, communities seek elsewhere the qualities (and their consequences) which they cannot do without. The sluggard Merovingians drove the Franks, Neustrians, and Austrasians to this imperative necessity. The last of the kings sprung from Clovis acquitted themselves too ill or not at all of their task; and the mayors of the palace were naturally summoned to supply their deficiencies, and to give the populations assurance of more intelligence and energy in the exercise of power. The origin and primitive character of these supplements of royalty were different according to circumstances; at one time, conformably with their title, the mayors of the palace really came into existence in the palace of the Frankish kings, amongst the "leudes," charged, under the style of antrustions (lieges in the confidence of the king: in truste regia), with the internal management of the royal affairs and household, or amongst the superior chiefs of the army; at another, on the contrary, it was to resist the violence and usurpation of the kings that the "leudes," landholders or warriors, themselves chose a chief able to defend their interests and their rights against the royal tyranny or incapacity. Thus we meet, at this time, with mayors of the palace of very different political origin and intention, some appointed by the kings to support royalty against the "leudes," others chosen by the "leudes" against the kings. It was especially between the Neustrian and Austrasian mayors of the palace that this difference became striking. Gallo-Roman feeling was more prevalent in Neustria, Germanic in Austrasia. The majority of the Neustrian mayors supported the interests of royalty, the Austrasian those of the aristocracy of landholders and warriors. The last years of the Merovingian line were full of their struggles; but a cause far more general and more powerful than these differences and conflicts in the very heart of the Frankish dominions determined the definitive fall of that line and the accession of another dynasty. When in 687 the battle fought at Testry, on the banks of the Somme, left Pepin of Heristal, duke and mayor of the palace of Austrasia, victorious over Bertaire, mayor of the palace of Neustria, it was a question of something very different from mere rivalry between the two Frankish dominions and their chiefs.

At their entrance and settlement upon the left bank of the Rhine and in Gaul, the Franks had not abandoned the right bank and Germany; there also they remained settled and incessantly at strife with their neighbors of Germanic race, Thuringians, Bavarians, the confederation of Allemannians, Frisons, and Saxons, people frequently vanquished and subdued to all appearance, but always ready to rise either for the recovery of their independence, or, again, under the pressure of that grand movement which, in the third century, had determined the general invasion by the barbarians of the Roman empire. After the defeat of the Huns at Chalons, and the founding of the Visigothic, Burgundian, and Frankish kingdoms in Gaul, that movement had been, if not arrested, at any rate modified, and for the moment suspended. In the sixth century it received a fresh impulse; new nations, Avars, Tartars, Bulgarians, Slavons, and Lombards thrust one another with mutual pressure from Asia into Europe, from Eastern Europe into Western; from the North to the South, into Italy and into Gaul. Driven by the Ouigour Tartars from Pannonia and Noricum (nowadays Austria), the Lombards threw themselves first upon Italy, crossed before long the Alps, and penetrated into Burgundy and Provence, to the very gates of Avignon. On the Rhine and along the Jura the Franks had to struggle on their own account against the new comers; and they were, further, summoned into Italy by the Emperors of the East, who wanted their aid against the Lombards. Everywhere resistance to the invasion of barbarians became the national attitude of the Franks, and they proudly proclaimed themselves the defenders of that West of which they had but lately been the conquerors.

When the Merovingians were indisputably nothing but sluggard kings, and when Ebroin, the last great mayor of the palace of Neustria, had been assassinated (in 681), and the army of the Neustrians destroyed at the battle of Testry (in 687), the ascendency in the heart of the whole of Frankish Gaul passed to the Franks of Austrasia, already bound by their geographical position to the defence of their nation in its new settlement. There had risen up among them a family, powerful from its vast domains, from its military and political services, and already also from the prestige belonging to the hereditary transmission of name and power. Its first chief known in history had been Pepin of Landen, called The Ancient, one of the foes of Queen Brunehaut, who was so hateful to the Austrasians, and afterwards one of the privy councillors and mayor of the palace of Austrasia, under Dagobert I. and his son Sigebert II. He died in 639, leaving to his family an influence already extensive. His son Grimoald succeeded him as mayor of the palace, ingloriously; but his grandson, by his daughter Bega, Pepin of Heristal, was for twenty-seven years not only virtually, as mayor of the palace, but ostensibly and with the title of duke, the real sovereign of Austrasia and all the Frankish dominion. He did not, however, take the name of king; and four descendants of Clovis, Thierry III., Clovis III., Childebert III., and Dagobert III. continued to bear that title in Neustria and Burgundy, under the preponderating influence of Pepin of Heristal. He did, during his long sway, three things of importance. He struggled without cessation to keep or bring back under the rule of the Franks the Germanic nations on the right bank of the Rhine,—Frisons, Saxons, Thuringians, Bavarians, and Allemannians; and thus to make the Frankish dominion a bulwark against the new flood of barbarians who were pressing one another westwards.

Contents