instead of hastening to organise new troops, contented himself with ordering a persecution of the Jews, whom he accused of having betrayed to the Persians some of the towns of Syria.

In 609 the enemy once more overran Asia Minor, capturing among other places the great city of Caesarea in Cappadocia. Again they met with little or no opposition; the emperor's attention was entirely taken up with real or imaginary plots in the capital. It seemed that he would allow the empire to be torn from him piecemeal, without striking a blow.

But relief was at last about to come to the suffering people of New Rome. In Africa there ruled as exarch Heraclius, the veteran officer whose victories had closed the old Persian wars of the time of Maurice. He was capable and much beloved both by the provincials and by his army; under his able rule Africa, alone among the provinces of the empire, enjoyed peace and prosperity. In 609 Heraclius received emissaries from Priscus, the commander of the imperial guard, one of the innumerable persons who had fallen under the suspicion of Phocas. The messengers bade Heraclius strike boldly at Constantinople, for Phocas was universally detested, and no one would raise an arm in his defence. At the same moment the exarch learnt that his tyrannical master had already conceived doubts of his loyalty, and had thrown his wife and daughter into prison.

Seeing that he must strike hard or be crushed, Heraclius determined to rebel. He spent the winter of 609-10 in fitting out a fleet, and launched it against Constantinople before Rebellion of Phocas had learnt of his revolt. The command Heraclius. was given to his eldest son, who also bore the name of Heraclius, for the exarch himself was old and ailing. At the same time, to make a diversion, he sent a body of cavalry under his nephew, Nicetas, to invade Egypt by land; they were to follow the line of the long coast-road through Tripoli and Cyrene.

When the fleet of the younger Heraclius reached the Dar

danelles it met with no resistance; on the news of its arrival, Priscus brought the imperial guard to join the rebels, and the emperor found himself deserted by all his soldiery. He strove, like his predecessor Maurice, to arm the factions of the Blues and Greens; but no one would strike a blow in behalf of such a worthless tyrant. Heraclius sailed unopposed to the Bosphorus, and as he arrived off the palace he met a boat containing the wretched Phocas, whom a private enemy had seized and cast into chains. The prisoner was brought on deck and cast at the feet of his conqueror. 'Is it thus,' cried Heraclius, 'that you have governed the empire?' 'Will you,' the fallen tyrant replied, 'govern it any better?' Heraclius spurned him with his foot, and promptly consigned him to the headsman.

Thus perished the first, but by no means the last, military usurper who sat on the Constantinopolitan throne, overthrown, as he had been elevated, by an armed rebellion. All the world with singular unanimity testified to the worthlessness of Phocas, save one single adherent; but this was no less a person than Pope Gregory the Great. Much to his discredit the great pontiff had been a supporter, nay, even a flatterer, of the Thracian boor who wore the eastern diadem with such ill grace. But Gregory had been an enemy of the unfortunate Maurice, because that prince-though orthodox in matters of doctrine-had shown scant respect to the See of Rome. He had called some of Gregory's epistles 'fatuous,' and had allowed John 'the Faster,' patriarch of Constantinople, to assume the title of 'œcumenical bishop,' a style which filled Gregory with horror, and caused him to exclaim that the times of Antichrist were at hand. Gregory therefore looked on Maurice's murderer as the avenger of the outraged dignity of the See of Rome, and did not shrink from heaping upon him epithets of unseemly adulation; the choirs of angels, he said, sang with joy in heaven at the accession of such a worthy Caesar! Truly this was a painful episode in the life of a man who, in spite of all his faults, has been justly hailed as a saint.

CHAPTER X

DECLINE AND DECAY OF THE MEROVINGIANS

561-656.

The sons of Chlothar divide the Frankish realm-Wars of Sigibert and Chilperich-The fortunes of Brunhildis-Continued wars of Neustria and Austrasia-Tyranny of Chilperich and Fredegundis-Decay of the Royal Power among the Franks-The House of St. Anulf and Pippin-Brunhildis regent in Austrasia - Wars of her grandsons-Her deathChlothar II. sole king-His weakness-His successor Dagobert 1. last free king of the Merovingian line-Rise of the Mayors of the Palace.

AFTER the first eighty years of its existence, the Frankish kingdom, which under three generations of warlike monarchs had continued to extend its borders so fast and so far, ceased suddenly to grow, and was given up for a century and a half to ruinous civil wars, as objectless as they were tedious and confused. In surrendering their primitive Teutonic freedom to their royal house, in return for the glory and aggrandisement which union under a single despotic hand gave to their hitherto weak and scattered tribes, the Franks had bartered away their future. As long as the house of Chlodovech were able and active, their subjects could console themselves for submitting to an autocrat by sharing in the power and plunder which a century of successful war brought in to them. But when the Merovings, though still retaining their despotic authority, grew weak and incapable, showing no trace of their ancestor's qualities, save an inveterate tendency to treachery

and fratricide, an evil time came upon the Frankish race. They paid for their early aggrandisement by being condemned to five generations of useless civil wars at home, and powerlessness abroad, while their hereditary monarchs sacrificed everything to their unending family feuds. Nothing more could be hoped for the Franks till they had rid themselves of the nightmare-incubus of this wicked house, whose repulsive annals are, on the whole, the most hopeless and depressing page in the history of Europe.1 From generation to generation their story reeks with blood; there is nothing that can be compared to it for horror in the records of any nation on this side of the Mediterranean. We have to search the histories of the courts of Mohammedan Asia to discover a parallel. The Franks only found salvation in the growth of checks on the royal power by the development of the great provincial governors, and by the final deposition of the Merovings in favour of the great house of the descendants of St. Arnulf, the Mayors of the Palace, whose strong hand at last stayed the fratricidal wars of the seventh century. And even when the new dynasty had mounted the throne, the Frankish realm showed fatal signs of the demoralisation it had suffered under the old royal house. The tendency of the race to acquiesce in the unwise habit of heritage-partition, and the unhappy grudge between the eastern and the western Franks, were direct legacies of the Merovings.

We left the whole 2 Frankish realm concentrated in the hands of the aged Chlothar, last surviving son of Chlodovech. When, however, this hoary ruffian, fresh from the murder of his eldest son, sank into his grave, in the year 561, his four surviving

1 In spite of the wickedness of the house of the Merovings, the Franks were very loyal, even in the days of the decay of the royal race. We find their chroniclers repeatedly contrasting the fidelity of the Franks with the fickleness of their Visigothic neighbours, who, having lost their ancient royal house, were continually making and unmaking sovereigns from among the ranks of their counts and dukes.

2 For genealogy of the house of Chlodovech see page 166.

tion of the Frankish Realm, 561.

children parted the kingdom once more among themselves, Second parti- not without a preliminary fight, in which Chilperich, the youngest of the four, having laid hands on his father's treasures, and raised an army with their aid, tried to put down his kinsmen, but failed. When he had been defeated and brought to submission, the realm was made into four shares. Charibert, the eldest son, took Paris and Aquitaine; Guntram the Burgundian kingdom;

Sigibert the Ripuarian land on the Rhine, and the tributary Thuringian and Bavarian lands beyond it; lastly, the restless Chilperich was given his father's original share, the old Salian land between Meuse and Somme, with certain districts farther south added to it, so that it extended nearly as far as the gates of Rouen and Rheims.

Of these four brothers, Charibert died young, in 567. He