Ten years later the same prince and people fought valiantly against the Danes when they invaded the Wars of Dane northern frontier of Charles's realm, though their and Slav. neighbours the Wiltzes on this occasion deserted to the enemy. The latter people, however, were subdued again in 812, at the very end of the great king's reign, so that he left his eastern boundary undiminished at his death. On the whole the Slavs of the North were not by any means the most difficult to rule of the many races with whom Charles had to deal.

With their fellow Slavs more to the south, the Czechs of Bohemia, the Franks had comparatively few rela- Subjection of tions. The vast uninhabited tract of forest and Bohemia. mountain called the Böhmerwald seems to have long kept them apart. But in 805-6 the king sent against them his son and namesake Charles the Younger, who twice wasted all the valley of the upper Elbe, and finally compelled the chiefs of the Czechs to acknowledge their dependence on the Frankish empire by paying tribute.

Avars.

Yet, though

South of Bohemia, along the Danube and the Raab and Leithe, the realms of Charles bordered on the Tartar tribe of the Avars, ancient enemies both of the Lombards and of the emperors of Constantinople. The Avars had of late years fallen on evil times. They were vexed with civil wars so much that none of their princes any longer ruled war with the the whole race, or could call himself by the title of Chagan, the old name of their supreme ruler. wasted by their own dissensions, and by the revolts of the Slavonic tribes who were their vassals, the Avars could not keep from their old habit of making descents on their neighbours. They drew down their doom on themselves by invading, in 788, at once the Lombard march of Friuli and the vassal duchy of Bavaria. When next he had leisure, two years later, Charles planned an invasion of their land on the largest scale. He himself marched down the Danube with an Austrasian and Saxon army, burst through the long line of fortifications

with which the Avars had strengthened their border, and wasted their lands as far as the Raab. At the same moment a great Lombard host entered the valley of the Drave, pushed into the heart of Pannonia, beat the Avars in the field, and stormed their great circular camps. The complete subjection of the whole tribe would have followed in the next year if Charles had not been called away by a Saxon revolt, which kept him employed during the two next campaigning seasons. The king himself never again took the field against the Avars, but his son Pippin and Eric duke of Friuli continued the war on his behalf. Twice they captured the great 'ring,' or royal camp, between Danube and Theiss, the central stronghold of the Avar race, and sent its spoils to Aachen in such quantities that Charles was able to send Avaric trophies as gifts to all his friends, even to such distant kings as Offa of Mercia. At last the spirit of the Avars was so much broken that their chiefs, or 'Tuduns,' came of their own accord to Aachen to do homage to Charles, and offered to receive Christianity. Their submission was accepted. The king appointed one of them to rule the whole race as his vassal, and bade him assume the ancient title of Chagan (805). This prince was baptized by the name of Abraham, paid a regular tribute to the Franks, and kept his subjects for the future from the dangerous temptation of meddling with the Lombard or Bavarian border. The Avars were, however, in a state of decay at this time, and their race and kingdom were ere long to be swept away by the invading Magyars.

The Avars subdued.

The same fate which befell the Tartar Avars fell also upon their southern neighbours and former vassals, the Slavs of the Save and Drave. These Carantanians (Carinthians) and Slovenians were subdued by the arms of Charles's Bavarian and Lombard subjects, and became dependants of the Frankish empire, forced to pay tribute and do homage, but not wholly incorporated with the realm.

We have already spoken in a previous chapter of the

dealings of Charles with Italy. He never succeeded in fully subduing the duchy of Benevento, though its dukes were several times compelled to do him homage when he marched in person against them. Italy was finally put under charge of Pippin, the king's second son, who was given the royal title and authority there as his father's delegate. Pippin, besides the task of striving to hold down Benevento, had also to cope with the intrigues of the East Romans in Italy. The Constantinopolitan emperor had still a foot-hold in the peninsula at Naples, Reggio, and Brindisi, and still enjoyed the homage of the half-independent peoples of Venice and Istria. Luckily for the Franks the Eastern realm was during the most important years of Charles's reign, under the weak hands of the empress Irene (780-90 and 797-802) and the usurper Nicephorus 1. (802-11.) They bitterly resented the establishment of a new power in Italy, and the assumption of the imperial title by the Frankish king, which they regarded as the worst insult that could be put upon the majesty of the Eastern Empire, which claimed to be the sole and legitimate heir wars with the of Augustus and Constantine. But their efforts East Romans. went little further than endeavouring to stir up trouble in Italy by means of the Lombard prince Adelchis, the son of king Desiderius, who had fled to Constantinople and become a Byzantine patrician. He tried to make more than one descent on Italy, but met with uniform ill-success. The only serious fighting between Frank and East Roman was in the years 804-10, when Nicephorus I. undertook several expeditions against Italy to avenge the revolt of Venice. In the firstnamed year, a party among the Venetians, who were torn by civil strife, called in the Franks and transferred their allegiance to Charles. Nicephorus sent out a fleet which harried the coasts of Tuscany and the Exarchate, but could make no solid impression on the Lombard kingdom. A little later the East Roman party in Venice got the upper hand, and once more handed the city over to the Byzantines. Contented with the recovery of his vassal-state, Nicephorus then made peace

with Charles. The only net result of the war had been that the Franks got permanent possession of Pola and the other coast-cities of Istria, which had hitherto been East Roman. Michael Rhangabe, the successor of Nicephorus, went so far in allying himself with Charles, that he consented to recognise him as Emperor of the West, a concession accepted with pride by the Franks, and regarded as a lamentable token of weakness by the Constantinopolitans (812).

One of the consequences of the conquests of Charles in Italy was to bring the Franks into collision with the Saracen pirates, who infested the central Mediterranean, making their harbourage in the ports of the islands which face the western coast of the peninsula. At a date which cannot be accurately fixed, the Franks took possession of Corsica and Sardinia, hunting out the Saracen colonists who had conquered the islands from the East-Romans some fifty or sixty years before. In 799 the Franks also took possession of the Balearic islands. These distant dependencies were attacked and ravaged by fleets from Spain on more than one occasion, but they were held down to the close of the reign of Charles. They were given in charge to the counts of Genoa and Tuscany, who seem to have been able to raise a considerable fleet, and more than once gained naval victories over the plundering Moor.

Wars with Saracen pirates.

But the most serious struggle between Charles and the Moslems took place in Spain, where during the whole of the second period of his reign the fighting was almost continuous. The permanent advance of the Christians beyond the Pyrenees began with the capture of Gerona in 785. The conduct of the war fell mainly into the hands of Lewis, the third son of Charles, whom his father had named king of Aquitaine, and trusted with all the affairs of the south-west. He and his chief captain and councillor William, count of Toulouse-a great hero in the Frankish romances-had to deal with the two first Ommeyad kings of Cordova, Abderahman (755-88) and

Hisham (788-897), both strong and capable rulers, from whom it was by no means easy to win territory. Nevertheless the Christian border slowly advanced, owing to the Conquests in seditious and turbulent Moslem governors, who Spain. were always rebelling against their masters, and calling in Frankish aid. In 795 the newly-won land beyond the Pyrenees-around the towns of Gerona, Cardona, Urgel, and Ausona-was made into a separate government, the March of Spain, and intrusted to a Margrave of its own, instead of forming a dependency of the duchy of Septimania. Barcelona, the greatest town of Catalonia, was added to the March in 797, by the treachery of its governor Zeid, who, failing in a rebellion against his master at Cordova, handed the place over to the Franks. The Moors recovered it for a moment in 799, but king Lewis then came over the Pyrenees with the whole levy of Aquitaine, and laid siege to the town. It held out for nearly two years, but fell in 801, conquered by famine, after the Franks had walled it in with a circumvallation, and sat before it in their huts for the whole winter of 800-801. The Moorish population departed en masse after the surrender, and the great city was re-populated with 'Goths' from Septimania. The Franks were now firmly established beyond the Pyrenees, and in the last ten years of Charles's reign subdued the whole southern slope of the mountains from Pampeluna as far as the mouth of the Ebro. Tarragona, the second town of Catalonia, fell in 809, and Tortosa, the great fortress which commanded the lower course of the Ebro, in 811. After this the Franks were able to cross the river, and ravage the wide plains of Valencia; it was probably their advance in this direction that induced Al-Hakem, the third Ommeyad ruler of Cordova, to sue for peace in 812, ceding to the Christians all that they had gained beyond the Pyrenees. The Franks were not destined to hold permanently the entirety of their conquests, but Barcelona and all the towns north of it were lost to Islam and won for Christendom: these strongholds guarded the Aquitanian frontier against Saracen inroads with success, and were