Two Lives of Charlemagne by Einhard & Notker

Author:Einhard & Notker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

The Second Book of the Deeds of Charles

1. As I am going to found this narrative on the story told by a man of the world, who had little skill in letters, I think it will be well that I should first recall to memory something of our ancestors, following the testimony of writers. When Julian, whom God hated,1 was slain in the Persian war by a blow from heaven, not only did the transmarine provinces fall away from the Roman Empire, but the neighbouring provinces of Pannonia, Noricum, Rhaetia and Germany also fell to the Franks or Gauls. Then, too, the kings of the Gauls or Franks began to decay in power because they had slain St Didier, bishop of Vienne, and had expelled those most holy visitors, Columban and Gall. Whereupon the race of the Avars, who had already often ravaged Francia and Aquitaine (that is to say, the two Gauls and the two Spains), now poured out with all their forces, devastated the whole land like a wide-sweeping conflagration, and then carried off all their spoils to a very safe hiding-place. What they were like, Adalbert, whom I have already mentioned, used to explain as follows: ‘The land of the Avars’, he would say, ‘was surrounded by nine rings.’ I could not think of any rings except our ordinary wicker fences for sheepfolds; and so I asked: ‘What kind of wonder do you mean, master?’ ‘Well,’ he replied, ‘it was fortified by nine hedges.’ I could not think of any hedges except those that protect our cornfields, so again I asked, and he answered: ‘One ring was as wide, that is, it contained as much within it, as all the country between Tours and Konstanz. It was built out of logs of oak and ash and fir and was twenty feet wide and the same in height. All the space within was filled with very hard stones and binding clay; and the surface of these ramparts was covered with great sods of earth. Within the limits of the ring small trees were planted of such a kind that, when lopped and bent down, as we often see done, they still threw out twigs and leaves. Then between these ramparts settlements and houses were so arranged that a man’s voice could carry from one to the other. And opposite the buildings, at intervals in those unconquerable walls, were constructed doors of no great size; and through these doors the inhabitants from far and near would pour out on marauding expeditions. The second ring was like the first and was distant twenty Teutonic miles (or forty Italian) from the third ring; and so on to the ninth: though of course each successive ring was much smaller than the preceding one. But in all the circles the estates and houses were everywhere so arranged that the peal of trumpets would carry the news of any event from one to the other.’2

For two hundred years and more the Avars had swept

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