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From The Temple Bar. THE BATTLE OF FONTENAYE, A.D. 841.

BY SIR EDWARD CREASY.

No. I.

"Lothair relied on his claims recognized by the clergy; the Germans, combined with the southern French, challenged him to submit them to the judgment of Heaven by battle Then it was that the great array of the Frankic Empire split into two hostile masses: the one containing a preponderance of Roman, the other of Germanic elements. The former defended the unity of the Empire; the latter demanded, according to their German ideas, its separation. There is a ballad extant on the Battle of Fontenaye, in which one of the combatants expresses his grief at this bloody war of fellow-citi

zens and brethren:

On that bitter night in which the brave fell, the

skilful in fight.'

For the destiny of the West, it was decisive."

RANKE," Hist. Reformation," vol. i., p. 13.

tary states to capitulate; but he stood firm, and his firmness was rewarded, in two years, by the recovery of Bohemia, and by the conquest of the Palatinates. In 1631, Austria lay again defeated, and apparently helpless and hopeless. There seemed to be no existing power that could save her from dismemberment by the conquering sword of Gustavus Adolphus. Again the tide turned in her favour; and after a long vicissitude of victory and defeat, she emerged from the Thirty Years War, scarred and weakened by many blows, but still a firstclass European power. In 1683, it appeared impossible that she could be rescued from the Hungarians, whom she had driven into insurrection by her tyranny, and from the victorious Turks, who were besieging Ir is now nearly twenty years since the her capital. Yet in fifteen years from that "Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World" time Austria had driven her enemies south were first published. During that time, I of the Danube; she had half conquered have received many suggestions as to other Bosnia and Servia; and her armies might battles, that might be included in the cat- have advanced to Constantinople, if the alogue of Decisives:" and the events of Emperor Leopold had not preferred to close the three great wars since 1850, of the his triumphant warfare in the East, and to Crimean War, the American War, and the prepare for the unexpected war of the SpanWar between Austria and Prussia, have ish succession in the West. In 1740, at the more than once made me think that I ought accession of Maria Theresa, France, Spain, to add a sixteenth, and possibly a seven- Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria - almost every teenth, to my list. But, after careful re- European power except England, Holland flection, it has always seemed best to leave and Turkey - joined in making war upon a the old number unaltered. With respect to young and apparently feeble sovereign; recent battles, the fact that they are recent and the dismemberment of the Austrian is, of itself, enough to forbid any one of dominions seemed to be inevitable. Yet them being, at present, recognized as one the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, left of "those few battles of which a contrary Austria impaired only by the loss of Silesia, event would have essentially varied the and, in the main, strong, victorious, and drama of the world, in all its subsequent with the different parts of her wide dominscenes." Let us, for a minute, consider ions far better knit together than before the the recent battle, which has been the very war. Let us come to events nearer to cur greatest of them in its immediate result. I own age; let us view the Austria, that mean the battle of Sadowa. Austria now struggled so often, so tenaciously, but for a appears to be thoroughly humiliated by that long time so calamitously against revoludefeat, and to be thrust down from her old tionary and imperial France. How precastation in the highest rank of European rious must her chance, not merely of retainStates. Prussia now appears to be elevated ing her old dignity in Europe, but of and aggrandized in even a higher propor-preserving her independence and national tion. But Austria has been as low before, existence, have appeared after Austerlitz! and yet has rallied. In 1618, a victorious After Wagram, it was more frail and desarmy of insurgent Bohemians were pouring perate still. Yet she survived, to be the their bullets into the very Archducal palace recognized chief among the allied powers, at Vienna; the sovereign of Austria (after- that conquered her late conqueror; and her wards the Emperor Ferdinand II.) was sovereigns exercised for more than thirty urged by a deputation from his own heredi- | years (from 1814 to 1848) more authority

-

than had been enjoyed by any of their pre-
decessors since the time of Charles V.
After tracing such alterations in Austria's
fortunes during the past, the man must be
a bold one who confidently predicts them
for the future. There may be more Ra-ings, fought in 1066.
detzkys still among the armies, capable of
changing reverse to victory, and of rivalling
the military frame of Tilly, of Wallenstein,
of Merci, of Montecuculi, of Lorraine, of
Eugene, of Dahn, and of the Archduke
Charles.

certainly the battle, which I had most often
been disposed to group with them.
would have found its place, in due chre-
ological order, between the battle of Tours.
fought in 732, A.D., and the battle of Has

On the other side, it is enough to remember Jena, if we want to find in history a lesson, how a single great military reverse may, in a few hours, turn back the triumphant career of a great military monarchy.

Fontenaye decided the separation modern Germany from modern France. E is scarcely possible to open a history a modern Europe, and to read many consecr tive pages in it, without noticing the persistent antagonism of Germany and France, and without feeling how much their rivalry has influenced the course of events throughout Christendom, and, indeed, throughest the world. When, after the Capetian ba succeeded to the Carlovingian dynasty, France, under Philip Augustus, began to

To use a forensic metaphor, the verdict of Sadowa may be set aside, and may be re-acquire consolidation and power, we see the versed on a new trial; and while there is Emperor Otho attacking her, but driven any reasonable possibility of this being the back by the important victory which King case, the arbitrament of battle given at Philip obtained, in 1214, over Otho and his Sadowa grand and terrible as it undoubt-German troops, and over Otho's English edly was! - cannot be accepted as decisive allies under the long-sworded Earl of Sais and final. At least, a generation must pass bury, at Bovines. We see the Emperor away before it can be so regarded. The Frederick II., in the thirteenth century historian in such matters is right in follow-checked in his schemes of conquest; and ing the course, which Horace censures in we see the last of the Hohenstoffens cut off the Critic,

Qui redit ad Fastos, virtutemque æstimat annis,

Miraturque uihil, nisi quod Libitina sacravit."

64

from the face of the earth, through the ad given to their Papal enemies by French princes and French armies. The fourteenth century shows us the Emperor Louis of Bvaria forming an alliance with our Edward I turn back, therefore, to the battles of III.; the fifteenth century shows us the former times; and among them I find one, Emperor Sigismund confederated with our marked by Palgrave as memorable in the Henry V. against France. Then comes the history of mankind; a conflict followed by rivalry of Maximilian with Charles Vill. a treaty of which (to quote Palgrave's and Louis XII.: and then follows the still words) the history of modern Europe is more memorable series of contests between an exposition."* This is the battle of Charles V. and Francis I. Add to all this Fontenaye, which was fought on the 25th the effective share taken in the Thirty Years of June, A.D. 841, between the forces of the War by Cardinal Richelieu and his generals Emperor Lothaire, aided by the Aquita- against the Imperialists. Hostility agains nians under their young Count Pepin, on one the Empire by open warfare or state intrigue side, and the forces of Lothaire's two or by both, marked nearly the whole of the brothers, Louis le Germanique, and Charles long reign of Louis XIV. In his success le Chauve, on the other. I do not abso-or's time, though France, when she engaged lutely class it as equal in importance to the in the Seven Years War, took the unusual fifteen, which I, many years ago, selected, and to the list of which I still adhere. But Fontenaye is one of the three which seem to me to rank next to the fifteen; and it is

846.

History of Normandy and England," vol. i. p.

part of a confederate of Austria, it was against a North German power that she was contending, when she lost Rosbach. On coming nearer to our times, we find a nu ber of battles between French and Germans, which, if set out in full, would occupy pages.

Valmi, Jemappes, Stockach, Arcola, Marengo, Hohenlinden, Ulm, Jena, Aspern, Wagram, Lutzen, Dresden, Leipsic, are but a few of them. These were all in the times of the first French Republic, and the first French Empire. In the journals of our own age we have read of Solferino; and few will now affirm with confidence that there will be no renewal of warfare between Frank and Teuton before the close of the present century, or even before the close of the present year.

Yet, when at the beginning of that first part of modern history, which is commonly called "Mediæval," Germany and France were emerging into civilisation, the one out of her primitive free barbarism, the other out of the chaos created by the downfall of the ancient Roman Empire of the West, they were both under the same ruler, they both formed parts of the same new empire, of an empire well knit together, and which seemed in no way likely to be so cloven asunder, that out of it there should be formed on the two opposite sides of the Rhine, two nations widely differing from each other in national character and in language, and destined to strive against each other for centuries, of which we know not yet the end.

and was proclaimed "Cæsar Augustus,” he acquired an accession of dignity, in the eyes of his subjects of every race, such as no number of victories in the field could of themselves have bestowed on him.

All things at this time tended, throughout reviving western and central Europe, to promote the idea, that the sole, true form of government for its various nations, was to unite them, and to keep them united under one supreme temporal head — the Emperor, beneath whose centralising sovereignty they were to form one State, even as beneath the paramount supremacy of the Pope in things spiritual they were to form one Church. Thus only could effectual resistance be made to the Mahometan enemies of Christendom, enemies who professed obedience to one true Caliph, and whose triumphs were attributed to the divisions which had existed among those whom they assailed.

The clergy zealously preached the duty of loyalty to the Emperor. They thought that the unity of the Empire was essential for the unity of the Church. Moreover, the Cæsar who in one part of the ceremony of an imperial coronation had been anointed by the Pope, ceased to be a mere layman. The passages of Scripture, which The most striking characteristic of the enjoin reverence to the Lord's anointed, empire, which Charlemagne founded, and were quoted, as applying to the Cæsar, alwhich he long maintained, is not its extent ways August, Emperor of the Holy Roman —though that is certainly marvellous; but Empire of the Germans." This sentiment the unity, and the organisation which he es- was felt as strongly to the west as to the tablished within its ample frontiers. He east of the Rhine. To the very last, amid reigned over all the countries from the Elbe the fatal feuds of the descendants of the to the Ebro; and he reigned over them, not great Charles, the clergy appealed to it, as Oriental conquerers have often reigned and strove to revive it. To the very last, over regions almost equally vast without they protested against the breaking up of any fixed system, or any real subordination the united dominion; and they long utof the conquered population to their titular Sovereign: Charlemagne maintained an orderly, an homogeneous, and a firm government; a few only of the more distant, and most recently acquired provinces, were mere tributaries retaining their own laws. The old veneration for the Imperator-the Cæsar of the ancient Roman rule-had never died away: and when Charles, on the termed, Louis-le-Débonnaire, -a phrase Christmas Day of the year 800, was solemnly crowned at Rome by Pope Leo,

*I might have added, "before the close of the present month."

tered in their uncouth Latin verses their passionate regrets for the time, when there was one kingdom, and when all the races of mankind comprised within that kingdom were blended together as a single people.

Charlemagne's successor on the throne of his mighty empire was his son, the Emperor Louis, whom French chroniclers have

which may perhaps be best translated as, Louis the Meek. He was a prince not deficient in understanding or in learning, or even in personal courage. But he had a