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This brings us to the record of the dealings of Charlemagne with the
Huns, who had thus dared to invade his far-extending kingdom. Vast had
been the work of this mighty monarch in subduing the unquiet realms
around him. Italy had been made a part of his dominions, Spain invaded
and quieted, and the Saxons, the fiercest people of the north, forced to
submit to the power of the Franks. Now the Avars of Hungary, the most
dangerous of the remaining neighbors of Charlemagne’s great empire, were
to be dealt with.

During the two years succeeding their defeat, overtures for peace
passed between the Avars and Charlemagne, overtures which, perhaps, had
their chief purpose in the desire to gain time to prepare for war.

These nomadic hordes were celebrated alike for their cunning and their
arrogance,–cunning when they had an object to gain, arrogance when they
had gained it. In their dealings with Charlemagne they displayed the
same mixture of artfulness and insolence which they had employed in
their dealings with the empire of the East. But they had now to do with
a different man from the weak emperors of Constantinople. Charlemagne
continued his negotiations, but prepared for hostilities, and in the
spring of 791 put himself at the head of a powerful army, prepared to
repay the barbarian hordes with some of the havoc which they had dealt
out to the other nations of Europe.

It was no light task he had undertaken, and the great general made ready
for it with the utmost care and deliberation. He was about to invade a
country of great resources, of remarkable natural and artificial
defences, and inhabited by a people celebrated for their fierceness and
impetuosity, and who had hitherto known little besides victory. And he
was to leave behind him in his march a kingdom full of unquiet elements,
which needed the presence of his strong arm and quick mind to keep it in
subjection. He knew not but that the Saxons might rise upon his march
and spread ruin upon his path. There was one way to avoid this, and that
he took. Years before, he had incorporated the Lombards with his army,
and found them to fight as valiantly for him as against him. He now did
the same with the Saxons, drafting a large body of them into his ranks,
with the double purpose of weakening the fighting power of the nation,
and employing their fierce courage in his own service. All winter the
world of the Franks was in commotion, preparing for war. The chroniclers
of the times speak of “innumerable multitudes” which the great conqueror
set in motion in the early spring.

The army marched in three grand divisions. One entered Bavaria, joined
to itself recruits raised in that country, and descended the Danube in
boats, which carried also an abundance of provisions and military
stores. A second division, under Charlemagne himself, marched along the
southern side of the river; and a third, under his generals Theoderic
and Meginfried, along its northern banks. The emperor had besides sent
orders to his son Pepin, king of Italy, bidding him to lead an army of
Lombards and other Italians to the frontier of Hungary, and co-operate
with the other troops.

Before telling the story of the expedition, it behooves us to give some
account of the country which the king of the Franks was about to invade,
and particularly to describe the extraordinary defences and interior
conditions with which it is credited by the gossipy old Monk of St.
Gall, the most entertaining, though hardly the most credible, writer of
that period. All authors admit that the country of the Avars was
defended by an ingenious and singular system of fortifications. The
account we propose to give, the Monk of St. Gall declares that he wrote
down from the words of an eye-witness, Adelbart by name, who took part
in the expedition. But one cannot help thinking that either this
eye-witness mingled a strong infusion of imagination with his vision, or
that the monk added fiction to his facts, with the laudable purpose of
making an attractive story. Such as it is, we give it, without further
comment.