From Charles the Great, by Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L., London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1897; pp. 153-164.
CHAPTER IX
Wars with Avars and Sclaves
It is a remarkable ethnological fact, and one for which there does not seem any obvious explanation, that, almost ever since the great barbarian migrations of the fourth century, the country between the Danube and the Carpathian mountains has been occupied by a people belonging to that which, for want of a better word, we call the Turanian stock; and yet that this Turanian deposit should not have been one and the same throughout, but was the result of three distinct migrations. In the fourth century the great non-Aryan nation on the Middle Danube was the Huns; from the tenth century to the present day it has been that noble nation whom their Sclavonic neighbours have named Hungarians, but who call themselves Magyars; between 567 and 800, it was the savage and somewhat uninteresting people of the Avars. The power of the Avars was at its height in the reign of the emperor Heraclius (626) when they formed the siege of Constantinople, and, joining hands with the Persians, had well-nigh accomplished the ruin of the eastern Empire. Soon after this came the revolt of the Bulgarians from the Avar sway, and from that 154 time onward, the power of the Avars steadily declined, but though no longer formidable to Constantinople they were still securely quartered in the vast plains of Hungary, and were most unwelcome neighbours to their old allies the Lombards of Italy. Twice in the course of the seventh century had they descended upon the duchy of Friuli, and each time their invasions had been marked by that character of destruction and purposeless brutality which has ever been the especial note of the Tartar conqueror.
If the Avars were at all like their Hunnish kinsmen (which is not improbable) they were small of stature, and swarthy in colour. Their long locks hanging down behind, in a kind of woven pigtail, are specially noticed by the Frankish poets. They were essentially a predatory nation, and (again arguing from the analogy of the Huns) we may presume that they were a nation of horsemen, dashing hither and thither on their nimble and hardy ponies, and vanishing ere the heavy squadrons of the Greeks or the Lombards could come up with them. They had one chief ruler, who was called the chagan of the Avars — the same title with which we are familiar as the Tartar khan — and under him, in a degree of subordination which it would be hopeless now to determine, were lieutenants or sub-kings, who bore the title of tudun. We hear also of the jugur, apparently not a proper name, but the title of a chief who contests the supremacy with the chagan. Tarchan seems to be a collective word for the Avar nobility.
The capital of the Avars consisted of a series of earth-works, which were known (probably to their German neighbours, not to themselves) by the collective name 155 of the Hring. Of this Hring an interesting description is given by the monk of St. Gall, who wrote some ninety years after its destruction, but who professes to tell the story as he heard it in his boyhood from an old soldier named Adalbert, who had served in the Avar campaigns. With a charming touch of nature, the old monk describes how the veteran used to prose on about his warlike experiences, and how he as a boy resisted, and often escaped from the tedious tale, but yet was in the end forced to listen and to learn.
He says: “The land of the Huns [or Avars] as Adalbert used to tell me was girdled with nine circles. Then said I, who had never seen any circles [circular fences] except those made of osiers, ‘What sort of marvel was that, sir?’ and he answered, ‘It was fortified with nine hegin.’ I, who had never seen any hedges except those with which the crops are guarded, asked him some more questions, and he said, ‘One circle was as wide as the distance from Zurich to Constance [thirty miles]: it was made of stems of oak, beech, or fir, twenty feet high, and twenty feet broad. All the hopllow part [between the walls] was filled either with very hard stones, or with most tenacious chalk, and then the top of the structure was covered with strong turfs. In between the turfs were planted shrubs which were pruned and lopped, so as to make them shoot forth boughs and leaves. Between one mound and another the villages and farms were placed, always within earshot of one another; and opposite to them, the walls (in themselves impregnable) were pierced by narrow gateways, through which the inhabitants, both those who lived in the inner circle and those who were in the outer ring, used 156 to sally forth for the sake of plunder. From the second circle, which was constructed like the first, there was a distance of twenty Teutonic or forty Italian miles to the third, and so on to the ninth, though [of course], each successive circle was smaller than the one before it. And from circle to circle the farms and dwellings were so arranged on all sides, that an alarm could be given by sound of the trumpet from each circle to its neighbour.”
It is easy to see that this description cannot be scientifically accurate (the distance between the “rings” especially must be over-stated): but still, this sketch of the camp-city of a robber horde, entrenched in the plains of Hungary in order to make war on the growing civilisation of the west, is surely worthy of our attention, and helps us to understand what were the difficulties of Charles and his subject princes in breaking the power of this barbarous race.
It will be remembered that one of the grounds of accusation against the insubordinate Duke of Bavaria was, that he had been intriguing with the Avars against his lord. It is probable that, sooner or later, when he found Charles bent on his destruction, Tassilo did make overtures of some kind for a league of mutual defence with his formidable eastern neighbour. Certain it is that they came, though too late to help him, with two armies against the Franks (788). One army went southward against the duchy of Friuli, the other westward against Bavaria. Both were defeated, the latter at Ips on the Danube (about forty miles south of Linz), having only just touched the frontier of Bavaria. Enraged at meeting such a hostile reception from the Bavarians 157 whom, as they said, they came to help, they made another invasion later in the same year but the two brave missi of Charles, Grahamann and Audacer, who had repelled the previous invasion now again won a signal victory. Great was the slaughter on the field and multitudes of the flying Avars were whelmed in the waters of the Danube.
It is probable that Charles was already revolving in his mind plans for the entire subjugation of the barbarous Avar nationality, but he knew that such an enterprise would require long preparations, and meanwhile events were again occurring on the Elbe which required his immediate attention. The Saxons, it is true, were still apparently submissive to the yoke — we are now in the seven years’ peace (785-792) which followed the submission of Widukind — but there was a fierce and warlike Sclavonic tribe called by themselves Welatabi, but by the Franks Wiltzi, who dwelt beyond the Elbe in the country which has since been named Pomerania, and these people, having by the subjugation of the Saxons become next-door neighbours to the Frankish State, were displaying those qualities which generally bring the less civilised race into collision with the more civilised, when a narrow boundary divides them. As the chronicler puts it: “This people was ever hostile to the Franks, and was wont to pursue with their hatred, to oppress and harass in war all their neighbours who were either subject to the Franks or in league with them. Whose insolence the king thought he ought no longer to put up with, and he therefore determined to attack them in war, and, having collected a large army, he crossed the Danube at Cologne” (789). 158 He marched through Saxon-land, crossed the Elbe by two bridges, led his army (in whose ranks fought many of the lately subdued Saxons), into the hostile territory, and, according to the usual formula, laid everything waste with fire d sword. The Wiltzi, though a warlike people, lost heart, and when the oldest and most powerful of their chiefs, a man named Dragawit, came in and made his submission to Charles, all the others followed his example. There were the usual oaths of vassalage, surrender of hostages, perhaps a promise of tribute: but although, from the way in which it is mentioned by Charles’s biographer it is evident that this campaign against the Wiltzi was an arduous one, it cannot be said to have produced any enduring results. Speaking generally, the Elbe remained the boundary of the Frankish kingdom. The various Sclavonic tribes on the other side of it were, to borrow a term from modern diplomacy, “in the Frankish sphere of influence,” but they were not obedient citizens of the Frankish state.
We return to the affairs of the Avars. The year 790 was a quiet one, so much so that Charles, now verging on his fiftieth year, and “fearing to grow torpid through lack of exercise,” sailed up the Main and the Franconian Saale to his palace of Königshofen by the banks of the latter river, and returned in like manner to Worms. But even in this year there were discussions and altercations concerning boundaries with the ambassadors of the Avars. Charles was evidently making his preparations and accumulating materials for his case against the doomed nationality.
Next year, 791, the storm burst, and Charles made 159 his great, his only personally commanded expedition into Avar-land. At a council of Franks, Saxons, and Frisians held at Ratisbon, it was decided that “on account of the great and intolerable malice which the Avars had shown towards the Holy Church and the Christian people, and the impossibility of obtaining justice at their hands by means of the royal messengers, a hostile expedition should march against them.” The whole army marched to the river Enns, the boundary of Avar-land, and there for three days sang litanies and witnessed solemn masses imploring God “for the safety of the army, the help of our Lord Jesus Christ, and victory and vengeance against the Avars.” Charles then, according to his usual custom, divided his army, marching himself along the south bank of the Danube, and sending the Saxons and Frisian auxiliaries with some Franks along the northern bank. The Avars had erected two strongholds, one on each side of the river, at a little distance above the modern city of Vienna: but they were struck with panic fear when they saw the two columns marching on either side of the river, and the ships (laden probably with provisions) sailing majestically between them. They abandoned their strongholds without striking a blow, “and so, Christ leading on his own people, both armies entered the country without sustaining any loss.” It was, in fact, a military promenade. Charles marched through the country, ravaging as he went, as far as the river Raab, and then, “after traversing and laying waste a great part of Pannonia, carried back his army safe and sound into Bavaria. This expedition was made without inconvenience of any kind, save that in that part of the 160 army which the king commanded, so great a pestilence arose among the horses that scarcely the tenth part out of so many thousands of horses is said to have remained alive.” The king returned to Ratisbon, which he evidently intended now to make his headquarters till the end of the Avar war, and kept his Christmas there.
Next year, however (792), broke out the conspiracy of Pippin the Hunchback, and this probably occupied so much of Charles’s attention as to make it impossible to undertake an expedition into Avar-land. He remained, however, during the whole year in Bavaria, and ordered the construction of a bridge of boats which he might in the next campaign throw across the Danube, and so at any moment unite the two armies marching along the opposite banks of the river.
In 793 came the terrible tidings of the destruction of Theodoric’s army by the banks of the Weser, and the rekindling of the Saxon war, deadlier and fiercer than ever. The abortive attempt to canalise the feeders of the Danube and Rhine, and so unite those two great arteries of his kingdom, occupied Charles all the summer of that year. On its failure he recognised that the war against the Avars must be suspended for a season, at any rate as far as his personal share in it was concerned. He set his face northward and made Frankfort, Aachen, and the towns of Saxon-land itself, his abiding places during the six years that followed.
But it seemed that the great campaign of 791 had been even more successful than it was thought to be at the time. There appear to have been jealousies and rivalries in the Avar kingdom which, as soon as the restraint of fear was removed, as soon as it was seen 161 that the chagan was not invincible, broke forth into open dissension and completed the wreck of the barbarous state. In the summer of 795, while Charles, keenly intent on the Saxon war, was encamped by the Elbe in a place near to the present Lüneberg, there came to him messengers from a tudun of the Avars announcing his willingness to be baptized and to hand over his people and land to the Frankish king. And in fact next year this tudun came according to his promise to Aachen, and there made his formal submission to Charles. He and his followers were baptized and returned home enriched by royal gifts.
But meanwhile there had been more evident tokens of the utter collapse of the Avar kingdom. The conduct of the war after Charles’s departure had apparently been left to the Duke of Friuli, who inherited the hatred of two centuries of border wars between his duchy and the Avars. The duke now ruling was a Frank named Eric, a man distinguished in the wars, and who might truly be called a Paladin of Charles’s court, but also a generous benefactor of the poor, a friend of the Church, a man to whom Paulinus, Bishop of Aquileia, addressed a treatise on practical religion (perhaps something like Jeremy Taylor’s treatise on Holy Living), evidently with the assurance that it would meet with a hearty welcome from his friend. This devout and valiant warrior, in the late autumn of 795, invaded Avar-land, penetrated to the far-famed Hring, pierced through all its seven circles, and made himself master of the immense hoard which the chagans had been piling up there for two centuries. It was no wonder that he found an enormous accumulation of treasure, 162 for, besides the results of the mere robber raids which the predatory Avars had made on all the surrounding peoples, during a great part of the seventh century the eastern emperors had been forced to pay 80,000 or 100,000 golden solidi as a yearly tribute to these terrible neighbours; nay, on one occasion the Emperor Heraclius had to purchase peace from them at the price of 200,000 solidi. The locking up of such a vast quantity of the only considerable European currency in this barbarian stronghold must have sensibly affected the economic condition of Europe, and it would not be surprising if future inquirers should discover that there was a great rise of prices as the consequence of its dispersion. Besides the hoarded solidi there were gorgeous arms, silken tissues, and many other precious things; and all these, according to one annalist, were sent piled on fifteen great waggons, each drawn by four oxen, to Charles at Aachen. The courtiers and nobles received generous presents from the king out of the great hoard; the pope and his chief ecclesiastical friends were not forgotten, but much also was laid up in the royal treasury and not distributed till the king’s death.
In the next year (796) Charles’s son Pippin, King of Italy, followed up Eric’s success; again visited the mysterious Hring to complete the work of spoliation, drove the Avars across the Theiss, and visited his father at Aachen, bringing with him the plunder of the conquered people.
There were indeed some upflickerings of the apparently extinguished fire. The baptized tudun failed to keep his oath of fealty to Charles, and had to be punished for his perfidy. In 799 Gerold, the Frankish 163 governor of Bavaria, brother of Charles’s late queen Hildegard, fell in battle with the insurgent Avars. But this Turanian people made not near so obstinate or long continued a resistance as the Teutonic Saxons. In the year 805 we find the capchan, who was a Christian, and bore the Greek name Theodore, humbly petitioning the Emperor Charles that on account of the needs of his people a place of habitation might be assigned to them between Sabaria and Carnuntum (the country round the Neusiedler See). His request was granted, and he returned to his people enriched by presents from the emperor, but soon after died. The new chagan soon after “sent one of his nobles praying that he might have the ancient honour which the chagan used to have among the Avars. To which prayer the emperor gave his assent, and ordered that the chagan should have the supremacy over the whole kingdom according to the old custom of the Avars.”
After this we practically hear no more of the Avars during the lifetime of Charles. The power of the great Turanian kingdom was utterly broken, and possibly, but for the invasion of the Hungarians, who appeared upon the scene about seventy years after the death of Charlemagne, there would have been a complete reconquest of the lands of the Middle Danube by the Teutonic race. It must not be forgotten, however, that here, as well as further north, Sclavonic tribes were hovering round the eastern border of the Frankish kingdom, and, in fact, it was in a war with one of these tribes, the Croatian inhabitants of Tarsatica, on the Adriatic, that the valiant Eric of Friuli lost his life (799). The news was brought to King Charles at Paderborn at the same time as the 164 tidings of the death of his brother-in-law, Gerold, and saddened him in the midst of his Saxon victories. Bishop Paulinus wrote a Latin elegy on the death of his friend, in which, like David in his lament over Saul, he prayed that neither dew nor rain might fall on the Liburnian shore, nor corn nor wine might gladden the hills on which the noble Eric met his doom.