After having conquered Spain, the Arabs continued their aggression in a northern direction. In 720, they took Narbonne in southern France, and for ten years they launched numerous and bloody raids into the Frankish Merovingian territories, notably up to Autun and Bordeaux. The majordomus of Austrasia, Charles Martel (meaning the Hammer), who had taken over most of the powers of the weak Merovingian king Thierry IV, reacted to the Saracen threat by raising an army. He defeated the Moors in Moussais-la-Bataille near Poitiers on 25 October 732.
Charles the Hammer’s victory marks an important moment in the history of Christian Europe because the expansion of Islam was stopped. The battle of Poitiers also showed the tactical supremacy of the armored cavalry that would be the mainstay of medieval warfare.
Ground plan of the old city in Segovia (Spain). Segovia was situated in Castilla on a steep ridge 66 m high at the confluence of rivers Eresma and Clamores. The Ciudad Vieja (old city) was created by the Romans and became a Moorish alcazar (stronghold). After the Reconquista, the Moorish fortress was turned into a residence for the kings of Castilla. It was profoundly reshaped in the 15th century by King Juan II in the Mudejar style combining luxurious living accommodations with military elements, a circular dungeon, high walls and towers. Segovia was an important economical, administrative and political center playing a major role in the history of Spain. The ground plan shows the old city with the Moorish alcazar (1), the cathedral (2) and the Roman aqueduct (3).
Exploiting his fame and prestige, Charles Martel brought the rich Aquitaine and the other Frankish kingdoms under his power. His son Pepin the Short (741-768) overthrew the last Merovingian king, Childeric III the Idle, in 751. Cleverly, the cunning Pepin arranged to be crowned king by the pope Zacharias. Thus from an illegal coup he created a legitimate new dynasty, today called Carolingian after his father’s name (Charles is in Latin Carolus).
Pepin conquered a part of northern Italy from the Lombards in 756. Those territories were yielded to the pope and formed the nucleus of the pontifical state. Pepin continued the struggle against the Saracens, liberated the province of Septimania (today Languedoc in southern France) in 759, and repressed a revolt in Aquitaine from 761 to 768.
When Pepin died in 768, according to unwritten but customary Germanic laws, the reunited Frankish kingdom was divided again between his two sons: Carloman and Charles. Carloman died prematurely, however, and in 771 only Charles remained as king.
A king of enormous prestige, Charles (742-814) is
View of alcazar in Segovia (Spain)
Called the Great (in Latin, Carolus Magnus; in French, Charlemagne; in Dutch, Karel de Groote; in German, Karl der Grofie). He became a legendary sovereign throughout medieval Europe. During his long reign, which lasted for forty-six years, Charlemagne undertook a huge program of expansion, both territorial and religious. With the Church’s support, he pursued a policy of
Aggression and evangelism outside the realm, with unceasing war expeditions establishing the Frankish authority.
In 774, Charlemagne defeated the revolt of the Lombards of northern Italy and proclaimed himself king of both the Franks and the Lombards. He led another victorious campaign against the separatist Aquitaine in 781.
In 787, he launched a successful war against the pagan Avars in the Danube region, but his efforts to drive the Saracens off of Spain were in vain. He conquered Bavaria, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg in 788. Northern Germany and Saxony up to the river Elbe were conquered and Christianized after numerous ruthless wars and atrocious campaigns lasting more than thirty years.
By the end of the 8th century, the period of conquest was complete, and Charlemagne had reconstituted the Ancient western Roman Empire, along with a wide part of northern and central Germany, but without the British Isles and French Brittany.
Champion of the Christian faith, ally of the papacy and the landowning nobility, victor against the Arabs, Charlemagne was henceforth the most powerful sovereign of all western Europe. At Christmas of the year 800, he was crowned emperor by the pope Leon III in Rome.
The new emperor’s task was now to defend his possessions from external aggressions. Charlemagne organized the border provinces militarily into so-called marches; this term, originating from the old Frankish word Marka, means frontier. The march of Brittany, created as early as 790, was intended to repulse the boisterous Bretons. In 805, the Avars of the Danube, who could have been a threat to Bavaria, were contained by the eastern march, the Ostmark, which later became Os-terreich (Austria). The march of Spain, called marka his-panica (which would become the kingdom of Catalonia), was created in 811 in the south of the Pyrenees; with its capital Barcelona and the fortresses of Vich, Cardona, Girona and Lerida, it was intended to contain the Saracens. At the head of each march Charlemagne delegated a Markgraf (a term that gave us the words margrave and marquis).
The marches formed a strong defensive organization, but unlike the Romans who defended their empire by continuous lines of fortifications and entrenchments with permanent and fixed garrisons, Charlemagne’s defenses relied on mobile warriors, mounted on horse, operating an offensive warfare from strategic strong points. Indeed, the emperor had no permanent army; according to the traditional Germanic law, armed forces were raised for every campaign in spring and summer. Charlemagne, as a Frankish warlord, had the right to call up all free men for an expedition. Only the richest of them could be warriors because they were required to pay for their own weapons, military equipment and servants, and they received no pay but were rewarded by booty, land and estates taken from the defeated enemies. Accordingly the Carolingian army could not have been numerous; probably it consisted of a few thousand combatants. As for the huge figures given by the medieval chronicles describing thousands of valiant knights vanquishing hundreds of thousands of wicked enemies, these were written centuries afterwards; they do not reflect reality but are intended to impress the reader through rhetorical, allegorical and epic style.
Because of its huge dimensions, its varied pastiche of Germanic laws, its patchwork of populations, and its poor fiscal and administrative structure, the Carolingian empire was a vulnerable construction. Partly, the empire rested on the fighting high nobility and low gentry originating from the Merovingian organization. To this group of aristocrats (who of course were the same privileged cast called up for military service), Charlemagne delegated a part of his power, dividing the empire into counties, provinces, regions and marches commanded by graven (counts or earls), herzogen (dukes) and mark-graven (margraves). These powerful officers represented the emperor; they were appointed and dismissed by him and had large juridical, fiscal, administrative, and of course military and police power in their territories. At the regional level they in turn delegated a part of their power to local gentry, barons, viscounts and lords.
Recall, however, that the emperor had a poor fiscal administration and consequently no money; hence he could not regularly pay his officials. On the other hand, land and agriculture were the only wealth in a rural world. The emperor therefore had no choice but to allow nobility and gentry to live on the lands they administrated, drawing their livelihood from them.
The system was complicated by the fact that Charlemagne also appointed the bishops, who became not only spiritual leaders but territorial administrators too. All imperial servants were regularly inspected and controlled by officers called missi dominici (literally meaning sent by the master).
This system, based on loyalty and a personal oath of allegiance between important individuals and the emperor, functioned more or less successfully as long as Charlemagne was alive, and as long as the counts, earls, dukes, margraves, barons, viscounts and other local lords were loyal and willing to accept the fact that they were removable. Actually, however, the system was the great weakness of Charlemagne’s empire. The main imperial cohesion was the Church, and naturally the strong and charismatic personality of the emperor, who had the power to impose his will and to control personal relationships between individuals.
Though himself a brutal warrior, Charlemagne sought to bring spirituality, morality and education to his warriors, clergy and populations. His reign was marked by an artistic and intellectual revival, the empire was not invaded, and a semblance of internal peace was maintained, allowing a rebirth of commercial activities, notably in northern Europe. At all levels, however the effects of the Carolingian Renaissance were only moderate.
Wars were fought on the borders of the empire by horsemen. The tradition, recruitment and structure of the Carolingian army was unsuitable for fixed garrisons in permanent fortifications. Towns, even those few that were relatively prosperous, were not politically and economically significant, and their conquest and possession was not a decisive trump. Therefore military architecture fell into full decay. Existing works and urban fortifications dating from the Roman time were maintained little or not at all. Charlemagne allowed the dismantling of defense works so that stones from fortifications could be used to build churches, notably in Langres, Verdun, Reims, Melun, Frankfurt or Ratisbon, for example. Even Charlemagne’s palace in the imperial capital city, Aix-la-Chapelle (today Achen in Germany), was unfortified. Only a few border fortresses and frontier strongholds were erected or maintained in the marches to serve as offensive bases. It is rather difiicult to know what they looked like, since documents are lacking and works were later demolished or rebuilt. We may suppose, however, that they were in the Roman-Germanic tradition with stone walls, earth entrenchments, stockades and ditches.
If the, Jand frontiers of Charlemagne’s empire were rather well held owing to the marches, the maritime facade (North Sea, Channel and Atlantic Ocean) was poorly defended and vulnerable. As early as 799, Scandinavian pirates began to launch quick and bloody raids. Against them the emperor was powerless because he had no naval force. Charlemagne ordered the installation of fortified surveillance posts on the coasts, near the harbors and by the river-mouths. Those posts, however, were probably not numerous and were not likely strong enough to secure the coast.
Charlemagne’s empire did not survive long. Unity was maintained with difficulty by his son Louis the Pious from 814 to 840, but after Louis’s death, his three sons and successors quarreled and fought among themselves. The result of these fratricidal struggles was the partition of the huge empire by the treaty of Verdun in 843. Charles the Bald became king of the western part, which would become France; Ludwig the German became king of the eastern part (east of the river Rhine), which would give birth to Germany. Between these two kingdoms, the third brother, Lothar, was yielded a large corridor stretching from the Netherlands up to northern Italy. This absurd and incoherent realm proved impossible to rule, and Charles and Ludwig annexed large parts of it. By 870 Lothar’s territories had ceased to exist, but his name can be still found today in the French province Lotharingia or Lorraine.
The division of the Carolingian Empire marked the end of an era, the end of united Europe. The antagonism among the subsequent Carolingian kings, worsened and quickened by new invasions, precipitated the decomposition of Europe into the feudal time.
World History
