Charlemagne formed another conception and made another attempt.  Like more than one great barbaric warrior, he admired the Roman empire that had fallen, its vastness all in one, and its powerful organization under the hand of a single master.  He thought he could resuscitate it, durably, through the victory of a new people and a new faith, by the hand of Franks and Christians.  With this view he labored to conquer, convert, and govern.  He tried to be, at one and the same time, Caesar, Augustus, and Constantine.  And for a moment he appeared to have succeeded; but the appearance passed away with himself.  The unity of the empire and the absolute power of the emperor were buried in his grave.  The Christian religion and human liberty set to work to prepare for Europe other governments and other destinies.

Great men do great things which would not get done without them; they set their mark plainly upon history, which realizes a portion of their ideas and wishes; but they are far from doing all they meditate, and they know not all they do.  They are at one and the same time instruments and free agents in a general design which is infinitely above their ken, and which, even if a glimpse of it be caught, remains inscrutable to them—­ the design of God towards mankind.  When great men understand that such is their position and accept it, they show sense, and they work to some purpose.  When they do not recognize the limits of their free agency, and the veil which hides from their eyes the future they are laboring for, they become the dupes, and frequently the victims, of a blind pride, which events, in the long run, always end by exposing and punishing.

Amongst men of his rank, Charlemagne has had this singular good fortune, that his error, his misguided attempt at imperialism, perished with him, whilst his salutary achievement, the territorial security of Christian Europe, has been durable, to the great honor, as well as great profit, of European civilization.

CHAPTER XII.——­DECAY AND FALL OF THE CARLOVINGIANS.

From the death of Charlemagne to the accession of Hugh Capet,—­that is, from 814 to 987,—­thirteen kings sat upon the throne of France.  What then became, under their reign and in the course of those hundred and seventy-three years, of the two great facts which swayed the mind and occupied the life of Charlemagne?  What became, that is, of the solid territorial foundation of the kingdom of Christian France, through efficient repression of foreign invasion, and of the unity of that vast empire wherein Charlemagne had attempted and hoped to resuscitate the Roman empire?

The fate of those two facts is the very history of France under the Carlovingian dynasty; it is the only portion of the events of that epoch which still deserves attention nowadays, for it is the only one which has exercised any great and lasting influence on the general history of France.