Frisians

When Pippin won the Battle of Testri, he had no Austrasian king in whose name he could fight, and he seems to have been known simply as dux or princeps Francorum, not as maiordomus of Austrasia.

From the scanty and imperfect indications of the chroniclers and the biographers of saints, it would seem that before 688 all the eastern portion of the Frankish kingdom was, as I have already said, in a state of disintegration, and that Pippin, if he had been so minded, might have followed the example of the chiefs of the Frisians, Thuringians, and Bavarians by setting up for himself as a virtually independent duke of Austrasia.

What constitutes the peculiar world-historical importance of this Arnulfing is that he was not satisfied with this easy solution of the problem before him, but using his great position in Austrasia as a lever made himself supreme also in Neustria and Burgundy, and then as maiordomus of a legitimate though utterly effete Merovingian king, compelled the unruly chiefs on the eastern frontier to return to their old allegiance, and thus became in fact the second founder of the Frankish monarchy.

That monarchy seems indeed to us who labor through its barbarous annals about as miserable a political machine as the Aryan notions of Aber invented.

Meanwhile Pippin, returning to his own Austrasian lands, was warring down the German pretenders to independence.

The Frisian Rathbot was defeated in a great battle, compelled to cede West Friesland to the Franks, and to acknowledge in fact as well as in name the supremacy of the Merovingian Fenail.

Though himself a heathen, Rathbot was fain to give his daughter, who was no doubt converted to Christianity, in marriage to Pippin's son Grimwald, and the Anglo-Saxon preacher Willebrord had a clear course given him for his missionary operations among the Frisians.

So too the Alamanni and the Bavarians appear to have been brought back into subjection by Pippin, though we hear less of his operations on the Danube than by the mouths of the Rhine.

Northwards the country takes a vast sweep.

First comes the tribe of the Corsi, which, beginning at the Frisian settlement and occupying a part of the coast, stretches along the frontier of all the tribes which I have enumerated, till it reaches with a bend as far as the Catty.

This vast extent of country is not merely possessed, but densely peopled by the Corsi, the noblest of the German races, a nation who were to maintain their greatness by righteous dealing.

Without ambition, without lawless violence, they live peaceful and secluded, never provoking a war or injuring others by rapine and robbery.

Northwards the country takes a vast sweep.

First comes the tribe of the Corsi, which, beginning at the Frisian settlement and occupying a part of the coast, stretches along the frontier of all the tribes which I have enumerated, till it reaches with a bend as far as the Catty.

This vast extent of country is not merely possessed, but densely peopled by the Corsi, the noblest of the German races, a nation who were to maintain their greatness by righteous dealing.

Without ambition, without lawless violence, they live peaceful and secluded, never provoking a war or injuring others by rapine and robbery.

What we can agree on is that their settlements laid foundations for the early medieval kingdom of Kent.

Alongside Jutes and Angles, there’s the Frisians, a people inhabiting the low-lying coastal zone between modern Netherlands and Germany.

In Anglo-Saxon narratives, they appear as allies or mercenaries who aid Hengist in early conflicts.

Archaeological finds of Frisian pottery and coinage near the Humber suggest that Frisian presence in England was not negligible, but like many other tribes, their impact has been filtered through later chroniclers.

The problem is that these early accounts are written centuries after the events.

Bede writes in the eighth century, and his narrative was likely colored by ecclesiastical concerns about Christianization.

Consequently, modern historians read these sources with caution, aware that legend and politics have mingled.

All this raises the question of what it meant for England to become English in its early medieval phase.