[69] Their ambassadors at last saluted him by the desired title 'Laudes ei dixerunt imperatorem eum et basileum appellantes.' Eginh. _Ann._, ad ann. 812. [70] Harun er Rashid; Eginh. _Vita Karoli_, c. 16. [71] So Pope John VIII in a document quoted by Waitz, _Deutsche Verfassungs-geschichte_, iii. [72] Pertz, _M. G. H._ iii. (legg. I.) [73] Pütter, _Historical Development of the German Constitution_; so too Conring, and esp. David Blondel, _Adv. Chiffletium_. [74] 'Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit,' is repeated in this conquest of the Teuton by the Roman. [75] The notion that once prevailed that the Irminsûl was the 'pillar of Hermann,' set up on the spot of the defeat of Varus, is now generally discredited. Some German antiquaries take the pillar to be a rude figure of the native god Irmin; but nothing seems to be known of this alleged deity: and it is more probable that the name Irmin is after all merely an altered form of the Keltic word which appears in Welsh as Hir Vaen, the long stone (_Maen_, a stone). Thus the pillar, so far from being the monument of the great Teutonic victory, would commemorate a pre-Teutonic race, whose name for it the invading tribes adopted. The Rev. Dr. Scott, of Westminster, to whose kindness I am indebted for this explanation, informs me that a rude ditty recording the destruction of the pillar by Charles was current on the spot a few years ago. It ran thus:-- 'Irmin slad Irmin Sla Pfeifen sla Trommen Der Kaiser wird kommen Mit Hammer und Stangen Wird Irmin uphangen.' [76] Eginhard, _Ann_. [77] Most probably the Scots of Ireland--Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap. 16. [78] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap. 23. [79] Aix-la-Chapelle. See the lines in Pertz (_M. G. H._ ii.), beginning,-- 'Urbs Aquensis, urbs regalis, Sedes regni principalis, Prima regum curia.' This city is commonly called Aken in English books of the seventeenth century, and probably that ought to be taken as its proper English name. That name has, however, fallen so entirely into disuse that I do not venture to use it; and as the employment of the French name Aix-la-Chapelle seems inevitably to produce the belief that the place is and was, even in Charles's time, a French town, there is nothing for it but to fall back upon the comparatively unfamiliar German name. [80] Engilenheim, or Ingelheim, lies near the left shore of the Rhine between Mentz and Bingen. [81] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap. 29. [82] Eginhard, _Vita Karoli_, cap. 17. [83] It is not a little curious that of the three whom the modern French have taken to be their national heroes all should have been foreigners, and two foreign conquerors.