“The second,” pursued Basina, “are the men of the following century—­our more remote descendants—­rude as the bear, fell as the wolf, fawning as the jackal, cruel as the hyena—­the curse of their people and—­themselves.  The last one—­the following century—­they will be weak, timid, irresolute—­the prey of every base and low thing, the victims of violence, deceit, and cunning; vanquished and destroyed at last by the smallest of their own subjects.”

Such was Childeric’s vision and his queen’s interpretation.

As she had predicted, the Merovingian dynasty lasted three hundred years, when it was overturned by one Pepin of Heristal, the smallest man of his day—­at least, so tradition tells.

At the death of Clovis his sons split up the kingdom, and from that epoch a deadly war was waged between the rival kingdoms of Neustria and Austrasia, the west and the east.

The wars of Neustria and Austrasia (Ost Reich, the Eastern Kingdom, which has, of course, no connexion with the modern Austria) are related by Gregory of Tours in his Ecclesiastical History of the Franks, one of the most brilliant pieces of historical and biographical writing to be discovered among the literature of Europe in the Dark Ages.  Metz was the capital of this kingdom-province.  Fredegonda, the queen of Chilperic of Neustria, had a deadly blood-feud with her sister-in-law of Austrasia, and in the event put her rival to death by having her torn asunder by wild horses (A.D. 613).  Later Austrasia became incorporated with Franconia, which in 843 was included in the kingdom of Louis the German.

The Great Race of Charlemagne

The race of the Carolingians, whose greatest monarch was the famous Charlemagne, or Karl der Grosse, sprang from a family of usurpers known as the ‘Mayors of the Palace,’ who had snatched the crown from the rois faineants, the last weakly shoots of the mighty line of Merovig.  He was the elder son of Pepin the Short, and succeeded, on the death of his father in A.D. 768, to a kingdom which extended from the Low Countries to the borders of Spain.  His whole life was one prolonged war undertaken against the forces of paganism, the Moors of Spain who harassed his borders to the south, and the restless Saxon tribes dwelling between the Rhine, Weser, and Elbe.  Innumerable are the legends and romances concerning this great, wise, and politic monarch and statesman, who, surrounding himself with warriors of prowess whom he called his paladins, unquestionably kept the light of Christianity and civilization burning in Western Europe.  He was, however, quite as great a legislator as a warrior, and founded schools and hospitals in every part of his kingdom.  He died at Aix-la-Chapelle in 814, and was buried there.[1]

[Footnote 1:  For numerous critical articles upon Charlemagne and the epics or chansons des gestes connected with him see the author’s Dictionary of Medieval Romance.]

The ‘Song of the Saxons’