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was chosen by the misguided nobles of Neustria as mayor of the palace. Against this Berchar and his king, Theodoric III., Pippin of Heristal marched with a mighty host of Austrasians. Battle was joined at a place called Textricium, now Testri, not far from St. Quentin. Berchar and his king fled from the field. The former was slain (“by his flatterers,” says the chronicler), and Pippin became practically lord of the whole Frankish dominion. This event, as to the details of which we know next to nothing, but which was of immense importance for the future destinies of Europe, happened in 687. About seventy years after their first appearance in history the Arnulfings have won for themselves that high place which they will now hold in defiance of all foes till they have won a yet higher, the highest in Christendom.

CHAPTER III.

       PIPPIN OF HERISTAL AND CHARLES MARTEL.

       Table of Contents

      Thus at last was supreme power in the Frankish kingdom concentrated in the hands of that family of statesmen who were to hold it for two centuries. I have been somewhat minute in tracing the history of the Neustrian Mayoralty, but in the Austrasian kingdom it seems to have been rather as great nobles than as Mayors of the Palace that the Arnulfings rose to eminence. When Pippin won the battle of Testri he had no Austrasian king in whose name he could fight, and he seems to have been known simply as Dux or Princeps Francorum, not as Major Domus of Austrasia. From the scanty and imperfect indications of the chroniclers and the biographers of saints, it would seem that before 688 all the Eastern portion of the Frankish kingdom was (as I have already said) in a state of disintegration, and that Pippin, if he had been so minded, might have followed the example of the chiefs of the Frisians, Thuringians, and Bavarians, by setting up for himself as a virtually independent Duke of Austrasia. What constitutes the peculiar world historical importance of this Arnulfing is that he was not satisfied with this easy solution of the problem before him, but using his great position in Austrasia as a lever made himself supreme also in Neustria and Burgundy, and then as major domus of a legitimate though utterly effete Merovingian king, compelled the unruly chiefs on the Eastern frontier to return to their old allegiance, and thus became in fact the second founder of the Frankish monarchy. That monarchy seems indeed to us who labor through its barbarous annals about as miserable a political machine as the Aryan notions have ever invented; but, however bad it may have been, it was probably the best that could then be contrived for the united government of the countries between the Bay of Biscay and the mountains of Bohemia; and for the time it was all important for Europe that these countries should still form part of one state.

      For some years Pippin ruled the Western realm by means of a royal adherent, Nordbert, to whom however he did not concede the fateful title of mayor. About fourteen years after the battle of Testri we find his son Grimwald recognized as major domus for Neustria and probably his eldest son Drogo held the same office in Burgundy. Meanwhile Pippin, returning to his own Austrasian lands, was warring down the German pretenders to independence. The Frisian Ratbod was defeated in a great battle, compelled to cede West Friesland to the Franks, and to acknowledge in fact as well as in name the supremacy of the Merovingian fainéant. Though himself a heathen, Ratbod was fain to give his daughter—who was no doubt converted to Christianity—in marriage to Pippin’s son Grimwald; and the Anglo-Saxon preacher Willibrord had a clear course given him for his missionary operations among the Frisians. So too the Alamanni and the Bavarians appear to have been brought back into subjection by Pippin, though we hear less of his operations on the Danube than by the mouths of the Rhine.

      For twenty-seven years this strong and statesmanlike man ruled with absolute sway the kingdom of the Franks, and then in his old age, by one act of supreme folly, went near to ruining the whole achievement of a lifetime. As it was said of old, “Let no man be called happy,” so may we add, “Let no man be called wise, till his death.” He had married in early life a lady named Plectrudis, nobly born and with a reputation for prudence and ability, by whom he had two sons, Drogo and Grimwald. Drogo had died in 708, leaving two sons who were now grown up to manhood. Grimwald, who had married, as before said, a Frisian princess, had no son by her, but was the father of an illegitimate son, a little child named Theudwald.

      As for Pippin himself, like many other members of his house, though descended from the sainted Arnulf, and generally on very good terms with the Church, he seems to have been guilty of great laxity in his matrimonial relations. Assuredly the Arnulfings did not plunge into those excesses of profligacy which destroyed the vigor of the Merovingian line, yet there was a tendency in many of them to take a polygamous view of marriage, more suited to an Arabian Caliph than to a Christian nobleman. Thus we find that Pippin had another wife named Alphaida, who, though the relationship was an interlude in his married life with Plectrudis, is yet treated by the chroniclers not as a concubine, but as a lawfully wedded wife. To a son born of this marriage Pippin had given the name of Charles. According to an old Saga, when the child was born, the messenger came into the presence of the great mayor of the palace and, dismayed at seeing him sitting with Plectrudis by his side, shouted out “Long live the king. It is a Carl,” the old German word for a man. “And a very good name, too,” said Pippin. “Let him be called Carl.” This Charles, son of Alphaida, was in the year 714 a strong and vigorous man of between twenty and thirty, already married and father of an eight-year-old son.

      Now, when the aged Pippin was lying on that which was to prove his death-bed (at the villa of Jovius near Liège), his son Grimwald, a man “pitiful, moderate, and just,” who was his universally recognized heir, was on his way to visit him and receive his last commands, when for some unknown reason he was assassinated in a church at Liège by a heathen named Rangar. This was a cruel blow for the dying chieftain, but as far as the future of his house was concerned not an irreparable one. His obvious policy was to declare that Charles, the son of Alphaida, was to be his heir in room of the murdered Grimwald. Instead of this, influenced no doubt by his wife’s hatred of her step-son, he committed the inconceivable folly of passing over Charles, and naming, not even one of Drogo’s adolescent sons, but the childish Theudwald, son of Grimwald, his heir, and designating him for the mayoralty under the regency of Plectrudis. This was an absolutely preposterous arrangement and one foredoomed to failure. The Merovingian king, fainéant of course, but a lad of fifteen years old, was to have a little child of eight thrust upon him as adviser, factotum, supreme prime minister, and the nominal advice of the baby was to be given through the lips of his grandmother, a harsh and domineering old woman. Such a scheme of administering the affairs of a great kingdom crumbled, as it was sure to crumble, at the first contact with actual fact.

      “Plectrudis,” we are told by the chronicler, “with her grandsons and the king governed all things by her discreet rule.” One of the early acts of this discreet rule was to shut up her step-son Charles in prison. But deliverance for the Arnulfing house came from an unexpected quarter. The nobles of Neustria, indignant, probably, at being calmly transferred to the dominion of a beldame and a child, proclaimed one of their own class, a certain Raginfrid, major domus and supported his pretensions with an army. Neustria and Austrasia met in battle at the Cotian Forest, not far from Compiègne, and Nuestria won a decided victory, the baby mayor, who had been brought into the field at the head of the Austrasian leudes, being with difficulty carried off by his partisans. Raginfrid pressed on and formed an alliance with old Ratbod, the Frisian, and apparently with the Saxons also. Plectrudis, shut up in Cologne, saw her power slipping from her and the Austrasian state threatened with ruin. The disorganization which everywhere prevailed had at least this advantage, that in the confusion Charles escaped from his prison (715). He gathered round him some of his father’s adherents: he fought Raginfrid, his puppet king, and the Frisians: fought them at first unsuccessfully, for they pushed on to Cologne where Plectrudis was fain to purchase peace for herself and her grandsons by the surrender of a large part of the royal hoard. After this she and Theudwald disappear from history. Charles, whose powers of recovery the Neustrians appear to have under-rated, follows them westwards in 716 and wins a great victory over them at Amblève and another next year at Vincy. Raginfrid sees no prospect of defending his puppet king (to whom Charles has set up a rival) except by seeking the help of Eudo, the great Duke of Aquitaine, who as a practically independent sovereign, is ruling

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