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.
He rekindled in Austrasia the national spirit and some political life by beginning again the old March parades of the Franks, which had fallen into desuetude under the last Merovingians. Lastly, and this was, perhaps, his most original merit, he understood of what importance, for the Frankish kingdom, was the conversion to Christianity of the Germanic peoples over the Rhine, and he abetted with all his might the zeal of the popes and missionaries, Irish, Anglo-Saxon, and Gallo-Roman, devoted to this great work. The two apostles of Friesland, St. Willfried and St. Willibrod, especially the latter, had intimate relations with Pepin of Heristal, and received from him effectual support. More than twenty bishoprics, amongst others those of Utrecht, Mayence, Ratisbonne, Worms, and Spire, were founded at this epoch; and one of those ardent pioneers of Christian civilization, the Irish bishop, St. Lievin, martyred in 656 near Ghent, of which he has remained the patron saint, wrote in verse to his friend Herbert, a little before his martyrdom, “I have seen a sun without rays, days without light, and nights without repose. Around me rageth a people impious and clamorous for my blood. O people, what harm have I done thee? ’Tis peace that I bring thee; wherefore declare war against me? But thy barbarism will bring my triumph and give me the palm of martyrdom. I know in whom I trust, and my hope shall not be confounded. Whilst I am pouring forth these verses, there cometh unto me the tired driver of the ass that beareth me the usual provisions: he bringeth that which maketh the delights of the country, even milk and butter and eggs; the cheeses stretch the wicker-work of the far too narrow panniers. Why tarriest thou, good carrier? Quicken thy step; collect thy riches, thou that this morning art so poor. As for me I am no longer what I was, and have lost the gift of joyous verse. How could it be other-wise when I am witness of such cruelties?”
It were difficult to describe with more pious, graceful, and melancholy feeling a holier and a simpler life.
After so many firm and glorious acts of authority abroad, Pepin of Heristal at his death, December 16, 714, did a deed of weakness at home. He had two wives, Plectrude and Alpaide; he had repudiated the former to espouse the latter, and the church, considering the second marriage unlawful, had constantly urged him to take back Plectrude. He had by her a son, Grimoald, who was assassinated on his way to join his father lying ill near Liege. This son left a child, Theodoald, only six years old. This child it was whom Pepin, either from a grandfather’s blind fondness, or through the influence of his wife Plectrude, appointed to succeed him, to the detriment of his two sons by Alpaide, Charles and Childebrand. Charles, at that time twenty-five years of age, had already a name for capacity and valor. On the death of Pepin, his widow Plectrude lost no time in arresting and imprisoning at Cologne this son of her rival Alpaide; but, some months afterwards, in 715, the Austrasians, having risen against Plectrude, took Charles out of prison and set him at their head, proclaiming him Duke of Austrasia. He was destined to become Charles Martel.
He first of all took care to extend and secure his own authority over all the Franks. At the death of Pepin of Heristal, the Neustrians, vexed at the long domination of the Austrasians, had taken one of themselves, Ragenfried, as mayor of the palace, and had placed at his side a Merovingian sluggard king, Chilperic II., whom they had dragged from a monastery. Charles, at the head of the Austrasians, twice succeeded in beating, first near Cambrai and then near Soissons, the Neustrian king and mayor of the palace, pursued them to Paris, returned to Cologne, got himself accepted by his old enemy Queen Plectrude, and remaining temperate amidst the triumph of his ambition, he, too, took from amongst the surviving Merovingians a sluggard king, whom he installed under the name of Clotaire IV., himself becoming, with the simple title of Duke of Austrasia, master of the Frankish dominion.
Being in tranquillity on the left bank of the Rhine, Charles directed towards the right bank—towards the Frisons and the Saxons—his attention and his efforts. After having experienced, in a first encounter, a somewhat severe check, he took, from 715 to 718, ample revenge upon them, repressed their attempts at invasion of Frankish territory, and pursued them on their own, imposed tribute upon them, and commenced with vigor, against the Saxons in particular, that struggle, at first defensive and afterwards aggressive, which was to hold so prominent a place in the life and glorious but blood-stained annals of his grandson Charlemagne.
In the war against the Neustrians, at the battle of Soissons in 719, Charles had encountered in their ranks Eudes or Eudon, Duke of Aquitania and Vasconia, that beautiful portion of Southern Gaul situated between the Pyrenees, the Ocean, the Garonne, and the Rhone, who had been for a long time trying to shake off the dominion of the barbarians, Visigoths or Franks. At the death of Pepin of Heristal, the Neustrians had drawn into alliance with them, for their war against the Austrasians, this Duke Elides, to whom they gave, as it appears, the title of king. After their common defeat at Soissons, the Aquitanian prince withdrew precipitately into his own country, taking with him the sluggard king of the Neustrians, Chilperic II. Charles pursued him to the Loire, and sent word to him, a few months afterwards, that he would enter into friendship with him if he would deliver up Chilperic and his treasures; otherwise he would invade and ravage Aquitania. Eudes delivered up Chilperic and his treasures; and Charles, satisfied with having in his power this Merovingian phantom, treated him generously, kept up his royal rank, and at his death, which happened soon afterwards, replaced him by another phantom of the same line, Theodoric or Thierry IV.; whom he dragged from the abbey of Chelles, founded by Queen St. Bathilde, wife of Clovis II., and who for seventeen years bore the title of king, whilst Charles Martel was ruling gloriously, and was, perhaps, the savior of the Frankish dominions. When he contracted his alliance with the Duke of Aquitania, Charles Martel did not know against what enemies and perils he would soon have to struggle.
In the earlier years of the eighth century, less than a hundred years from the death of Mahomet, the Mussulman Arabs, after having conquered Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Northern Africa, had passed into Europe, invaded Spain, overthrown the kingdom of the Visigoths, driven back the remnants of the nation and their chief, Pelagius, to the north of the Peninsula, into the Asturias and Galicia, and pushed even beyond the Pyrenees, into old Narbonness, then called Septimania, their limitless incursions. These fiery conquerors did not amount at that time, according to the most probable estimates, to more than fifty thousand; but they were under the influence of religious and warlike enthusiasm at one and the same time; they were fanatics in the cause of Deism and of glory. “The Arab warrior during campaigns was not excused from any one of the essential duties of Islamism; he was bound to pray at least once a day, on rising in the morning, at the blush of dawn. The general of the army was its priest; he it was who, at the head of the ranks, gave the signal for prayer, uttered the words, reminded the troops of the precepts of the Koran, and enjoined upon them forgetfulness of personal quarrels.” One day, on the point of engaging in a decisive battle, Moussaben- Nossair, first governor of Mussulman Africa, was praying, according to usage, at the head of the troops; and he omitted the invocation of the name of the Khalif, a respectful formality indispensable on the occasion. One of his officers, persuaded that it was a mere slip on Moussa’s part, made a point of admonishing him. “Know thou,” said Moussa, “that we are in such a position and at such an hour that no other name must be invoked save that of the most high God.” Moussa was, apparently, the first Arab chief to cross the Pyrenees and march, plundering as he went, into Narbonness. The Arabs had but very confused ideas of Gaul; they called
