After the subsidence of the barbarian irruptions, the notion ofsovereignty that prevailed seems to have been twofold. On the onehand it assumed the form of what may be called"tribe-sovereignty." The Franks, the Burgundians, the Vandals,the Lombards, and Visigoths were masters, of course, of theterritories which they occupied, and to which some of them havegiven a geographical appellation; but they based no claim ofright upon the fact of territorial possession, and indeedattached no importance to it whatever. They appear to haveretained the traditions which they brought with them from theforest and the steppe, and to have still been in their own view apatriarchal society a nomad horde, merely encamped for the timeupon the soil which afforded them sustenance. Part of TransalpineGaul, with part of Germany, had now become the country de factooccupied by the Franks -- it was France; but the Merovingian lineof chieftains, the descendants of Clovis, were not Kings ofFrance, they were Kings of the Franks. The alternative to thispeculiar notion of sovereignty appears to have been -- and thisis the important point -- the idea of universal dominion. Themoment a monarch departed from the special relation of chief toclansmen, and became solicitous, for purposes of his Own, toinvest himself with a novel form of sovereignty, the onlyprecedent which suggested itself for his adoption was thedomination of the Emperors of Rome. To parody a common quotation,he became "aut Caesar aut nullus." Either he pretended to thefull prerogative of the Byzantine Emperor, or he had no politicalstatus whatever. In our own age, when a new dynasty is desirousof obliterating the prescriptive title of a deposed line ofsovereigns, it takes its designation from the people, instead ofthe territory. Thus we have Emperors and Kings of the French, anda King of the Belgians. At the period of which we have beenspeaking, under similar circumstances a different alternativepresented itself. The Chieftain who would no longer call himselfKing of the tribe must claim to be Emperor of the world. Thus,when the hereditary Mayors of the Palace had ceased to compromisewith the monarchs they had long since virtually dethroned, theysoon became unwilling to call themselves Kings of the Franks, atitle which belonged to the displaced Merovings; but they couldnot style themselves Kings of France, for such a designation,though apparently not unknown, was not a title of dignity.
Accordingly they came forward as aspirants to universal empire.
Their motive has been greatly misapprehended. It has been takenfor granted by recent French writers that Charlemagne was farbefore his age, quite as much in the character of his designs asin the energy with which he prosecuted them. Whether it be trueor not that anybody is at any time before his age, it iscertainly true that Charlemagne, in aiming at an unlimiteddominion, was emphatically taking the only course which thecharacteristic ideas of his age permitted him to follow. Of hisintellectual eminence there cannot be a question, but it isproved by his acts and not by his theory.
These singularities of view were not altered on the partitionof the inheritance of Charlemagne among his three grandsons.
