Part 5 (1/2)
38. I have collected these imperfect, and not always extremely consistent, notices of the aspect and temper of the Franks out of Mr.
Gibbon's casual references to them during a period of more than two centuries,--and the last pa.s.sage quoted, which he accompanies with the statement that ”one hundred and sixty of these rural palaces were scattered through the provinces of their kingdom,” without telling us what kingdom, or at what period, must I think be held descriptive of the general manner and system of their monarchy after the victories of Clovis. But, from the first hour you hear of him, the Frank, closely considered, is always an extremely ingenious, well meaning, and industrious personage;--if eagerly acquisitive, also intelligently conservative and constructive; an element of order and crystalline edification, which is to consummate itself one day, in the aisles of Amiens; and things generally insuperable and impregnable, if the inhabitants of them had been as sound-hearted as their builders, for many a day beyond.
39. But for the present, we must retrace our ground a little; for indeed I have lately observed with compunction, in rereading some of my books for revised issue, that if ever I promise, in one number or chapter, careful consideration of any particular point in the next, the next never _does_ touch upon the promised point at all, but is sure to fix itself pa.s.sionately on some ant.i.thetic, antipathic, or antipodic, point in the opposite hemisphere. This manner of conducting a treatise I find indeed extremely conducive to impartiality and largeness of view; but can conceive it to be--to the general reader--not only disappointing, (if indeed I may flatter myself that I ever interest enough to disappoint), but even liable to confirm in his mind some of the fallacious and extremely absurd insinuations of adverse critics respecting my inconsistency, vacillation, and liability to be affected by changes of the weather in my principles or opinions. I purpose, therefore, in these historical sketches, at least to watch, and I hope partly to correct myself in this fault of promise breaking, and at whatever sacrifice of my variously fluent or re-fluent humour, to tell in each successive chapter in some measure what the reader justifiably expects to be told.
40. I left, merely glanced at, in my opening chapter, the story of the vase of Soissons. It may be found (and it is very nearly the only thing that _is_ to be found respecting the personal life or character of the first Louis) in every cheap popular history of France; with cheap popular moralities engrafted thereon. Had I time to trace it to its first sources, perhaps it might take another aspect. But I give it as you may anywhere find it--asking you only to consider whether even as so read--it may not properly bear a somewhat different moral.
41. The story is, then, that after the battle of Soissons, in the division of Roman, or Gallic spoil, the king wished to have a beautifully wrought silver vase for--'himself,' I was going to write--and in my last chapter _did_ mistakenly infer that he wanted it for his better self,--his Queen. But he wanted it for neither;--it was to restore to St. Remy, that it might remain among the consecrated treasures of Rheims. That is the first point on which the popular histories do not insist, and which one of his warriors claiming equal division of treasure, chose also to ignore. The vase was asked by the King in addition to his own portion, and the Frank knights, while they rendered true obedience to their king as a leader, had not the smallest notion of allowing him what more recent kings call 'Royalties'--taxes on everything they touch. And one of these Frank knights or Counts--a little franker than the rest--and as incredulous of St. Remy's saints.h.i.+p as a Protestant Bishop, or Positivist Philosopher--took upon him to dispute the King's and the Church's claim, in the manner, suppose, of a Liberal opposition in the House of Commons; and disputed it with such security of support by the public opinion of the fifth century, that--the king persisting in his request--the fearless soldier dashed the vase to pieces with his war-axe, exclaiming ”Thou shalt have no more than thy portion by lot.”
42. It is the first clear a.s.sertion of French 'Liberte, Fraternite and Egalite,' supported, then, as now, by the destruction, which is the only possible active operation of ”free” personages, on the art they cannot produce.
The king did not continue the quarrel. Cowards will think that he paused in cowardice, and malicious persons, that he paused in malignity. He _did_ pause in anger a.s.suredly; but biding its time, which the anger of a strong man always can, and burn hotter for the waiting, which is one of the chief reasons for Christians being told not to let the sun go down upon it. Precept which Christians now-a-days are perfectly ready to obey, if it is somebody else who has been injured; and indeed, the difficulty in such cases is usually to get them to think of the injury even while the Sun rises on their wrath.[18]
[Footnote 18: Read Mr. Plimsoll's article on coal mines for instance.]
43. The sequel is very shocking indeed--to modern sensibility. I give it in the, if not polished, at least delicately varnished, language of the Pictorial History.
”About a year afterwards, on reviewing his troops, he went to the man who had struck the vase, and _examining his arms, complained_ that _they_ were in bad condition!” (Italics mine) ”and threw them” (What?
s.h.i.+eld and sword?) on the ground. The soldier stooped to recover them; and at that moment the King struck him on the head with his battle-axe, crying 'Thus didst thou to the vase at Soissons.'” The Moral modern historian proceeds to reflect that ”this--as an evidence of the condition of the Franks, and of the ties by which they were united, gives but the idea of a band of Robbers and their chief.”
Which is, indeed, so far as I can myself look into and decipher the nature of things, the Primary idea to be entertained respecting most of the kingly and military organizations in this world, down to our own day; and, (unless perchance it be the Afghans and Zulus who are stealing our lands in England--instead of we theirs, in their several countries.) But concerning the _manner_ of this piece of military execution, I must for the present leave the reader to consider with himself, whether indeed it be less Kingly, or more savage, to strike an uncivil soldier on the head with one's own battle-axe, than, for instance, to strike a person like Sir Thomas More on the neck with an executioner's,--using for the mechanism, and as it were guillotine bar and rope to the blow--the manageable forms of National Law, and the gracefully twined intervention of a polite group of n.o.blemen and bishops.
44. Far darker things have to be told of him than this, as his proud life draws towards the close,--things which, if any of us could see clear _through_ darkness, you should be told in all the truth of them.
But we never can know the truth of Sin; for its nature is to deceive alike on the one side the Sinner, on the other the Judge.
Diabolic--betraying whether we yield to it, or condemn: Here is Gibbon's sneer--if you care for it; but I gather first from the confused paragraphs which conduct to it, the sentences of praise, less n.i.g.g.ard than the Sage of Lausanne usually grants to any hero who has confessed the influence of Christianity.
45. ”Clovis, when he was no more than fifteen years of age, succeeded, by his father's death, to the command of the Salian tribe. The narrow limits of his kingdom were confined to the island of the Batavians, with the ancient dioceses of Tournay and Arras; and at the baptism of Clovis, the number of his warriors could not exceed five thousand. The kindred tribes of the Franks who had seated themselves along the Scheldt, the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Rhine, were governed by their independent kings, of the Merovingian race, the equals, the allies, and sometimes the enemies of the Salic Prince. When he first took the field he had neither gold nor silver in his coffers, nor wine and corn in his magazines; but he imitated the example of Caesar, who in the same country had acquired wealth by the sword, and purchased soldiers with the fruits of conquest. The untamed spirit of the Barbarians was taught to acknowledge the advantages of regular discipline. At the annual review of the month of March, their arms were diligently inspected; and when they traversed a peaceful territory they were prohibited from touching a blade of gra.s.s. The justice of Clovis was inexorable; and his careless or disobedient soldiers were punished with instant death. It would be superfluous to praise the valour of a Frank; but the valour of Clovis was directed by cool and consummate prudence. In all his transactions with mankind he calculated the weight of interest, of pa.s.sion, and of opinion; and his measures were sometimes adapted to the sanguinary manners of the Germans, and sometimes moderated by the milder genius of Rome, and Christianity.
46. ”But the savage conqueror of Gaul was incapable of examining the proofs of a religion, which depends on the laborious investigation of historic evidence, and speculative theology. He was still more incapable of feeling the mild influence of the Gospel, which persuades and purifies the heart of a genuine convert. His ambitious reign was a perpetual violation of moral and Christian duties: his hands were stained with blood, in peace as well as in war; and, as soon as Clovis had dismissed a synod of the Gallican Church, he calmly a.s.sa.s.sinated _all_ the princes of the Merovingian race.”
47. It is too true; but rhetorically put, in the first place--for we ought to be told how many 'all' the princes were;--in the second place, we must note that, supposing Clovis had in any degree ”searched the Scriptures” as presented to the Western world by St. Jerome, he was likely, as a soldier-king, to have thought more of the mission of Joshua[19] and Jehu than of the patience of Christ, whose sufferings he thought rather of avenging than imitating: and the question whether the other Kings of the Franks should either succeed him, or, in envy of his enlarged kingdom, attack and dethrone, was easily in his mind convertible from a personal danger into the chance of the return of the whole nation to idolatry. And, in the last place, his faith in the Divine protection of his cause had been shaken by his defeat before Aries by the Ostrogoths; and the Frank leopard had not so wholly changed his spots as to surrender to an enemy the opportunity of a first spring.
[Footnote 19: The likeness was afterwards taken up by legend, and the walls of Angouleme, after the battle of Poitiers, are said to have fallen at the sound of the trumpets of Clovis. ”A miracle,” says Gibbon, ”which may be reduced to the supposition that some clerical engineer had secretly undermined the foundations of the rampart.” I cannot too often warn my honest readers against the modern habit of ”reducing” all history whatever to 'the supposition that' ... etc., etc. The legend is of course the natural and easy expression of a metaphor.]
48. Finally, and beyond all these personal questions, the forms of cruelty and subtlety--the former, observe, arising much out of a scorn of pain which was a condition of honour in their women as well as men, are in these savage races all founded on their love of glory in war, which can only be understood by comparing what remains of the same temper in the higher castes of the North American Indians; and, before tracing in final clearness the actual events of the reign of Clovis to their end, the reader will do well to learn this list of the personages of the great Drama, taking to heart the meaning of the _name_ of each, both in its probable effect on the mind of its bearer, and in its fateful expression of the course of their acts, and the consequences of it to future generations.
1. Clovis. Frank form, Hluodoveh. 'Glorious Holiness,' or consecration. Latin Chlodovisus, when baptized by St.
Remy, softening afterwards through the centuries into Lhodovisus, Ludovicus, Louis.
2. Albofleda. 'White household fairy'? His youngest sister; married Theodoric (Theutreich, 'People's ruler'), the great King of the Ostrogoths.
3. Clotilde. Hlod-hilda. 'Glorious Battle-maid.' His wife.
'Hilda' first meaning Battle, pure; and then pa.s.sing into Queen or Maid of Battle. Christianized to Ste Clotilde in France, and Ste Hilda of Whitby cliff.
3. Clotilde. His only daughter. Died for the Catholic faith, under Arian persecution.
4. Childebert. His eldest son by Clotilde, the first Frank King in Paris. 'Battle Splendour,' softening into Hildebert, and then Hildebrandt, as in the Nibelung.
5. Chlodomir. 'Glorious Fame.' His second son by Clotilde.