Empires and Barbarians (94 page)

But this, at best, is still only half an answer. Dynastic ambition provided the activating mechanism for state formation; being both cause and effect of the political revolution we have been observing, massive social and economic transformation was its necessary backdrop. But what underlay those initial social and economic transformations that gave such free range to dynastic wannabes to remake the map of central and eastern Europe?

In Soviet days, everything was so simple. From the fifth century onwards, often living alongside an existing population, egalitarian Slavs took possession of the landscape of what would become Slavic Europe. Then followed a long, slow process of internal social and economic evolution over the next four to five hundred years, until classes formed around manorial estate-based agriculture and the first states appeared, based on the unequal distribution of control of the agricultural means of production. This always looked more like a Marxist fairytale than anything to do with historical reality, and all the more recent work has only emphasized what a dramatic story state formation actually was. In many places, even initial Slavicization occurred maybe a hundred and fifty years later than used to be thought, manorialized agriculture followed state formation rather than preceding it, and archaeology has brought to light a sudden and violent final stage, where rising dynasts used military muscle rather than long-term socioeconomic evolution to destroy one sociopolitical order and replace it with their own. What we have to explain, all this emphasizes, is why in the ninth and tenth centuries dynasties were suddenly able to grasp the reins of power with so much vigour. Just as with the appearance of larger political structures in the Germanic world in the first half of the millennium, a key role was played by an increasingly dense network of contacts that grew up between Slavic Europe and its more developed imperial neighbours.

In central Europe, the Slavic world was in direct contact with two successive imperial states: the Carolingians in the eighth and ninth centuries, and the Ottonians in the tenth. Neither was as robust as their Roman predecessor, but each was more than powerful enough in their heyday for their military and diplomatic priorities to have major consequences for neighbouring Slavic and Scandinavian societies. Just as in the Roman period, the most immediate type of contact between Carolingians and Ottonians and their neighbours was imperial aggression. Both these late first-millennium empires built their internal political coherence around the distribution of gifts to local elites, who not only ran their localities but also provided emperors with military muscle.

But Carolingian and Ottonian emperors lacked not only the huge financial reservoir that control of the developed Mediterranean world had brought their Roman counterpart, but also any thoroughgoing powers of taxation even over such lands as they did control. As a result, their gifts to local elites often took the form of non-renewable assets such as land from the royal fisc, which generated a tendency for these empires to fragment from within, as power built up in local hands. The only thing that could square this circle was expansion, providing rulers with an alternative form of renewable wealth to large-scale taxation, and allowing them to reward local elites and maintain their own power at the same time. If anything, therefore, the maintenance of central power was actually predicated more upon expansion in both of these later empires than was the case even with Rome, and both preyed upon their neighbours as and when they could. In the ninety years separating the accession to power of Charles Martel in 715 and the later years of his grandson the Emperor Charlemagne, Carolingian armies were predatorily active in the field for all but five of them. In the first half of the tenth century, likewise, a steady
Drang nach Osten
on the part of what was originally the ruling ducal dynasty of Saxony was a key reason why Henry I and his son Otto I were able to beat off all comers and turn themselves into the Carolingians’ imperial heirs.
⁴⁵

Predatory expansion always produced pillage, but its real benefit was more structured, long-term exploitation. Even territories not fully
subdued were part of the story. From the time of Henry I, Bohemia had to pay an annual tribute, and after 950 owed military support to the dynasty. For about a decade from the mid-960s, likewise, Miesco I of Poland was cast in the role of tributary. For territories more thoroughly under the imperial thumb, the weight of exploitation was correspondingly heavy. Successful campaigns against the so-called Elbe Slavs (small-scale groups who lived broadly between the Rivers Elbe and Oder (
Map 14
) in the first half of the tenth century) allowed the Ottonians to establish nine major collection centres (called ‘towns’,
urbes
– or burgwards in our sources) east of the Elbe. These received what the charters euphemistically call ‘annual gifts’ from the Slavs, some of the proceeds of which were divided between the Ottonians’ two favourite ecclesiastics, the Archbishops of Magdeburg and Meissen. It is the charters granted these sees by Otto that document the arrangement. Nor was it just ecclesiastical institutions that benefited from the flow of the new wealth. Frontier commands in what can only be called this colonial situation – called ‘marches’ – were in huge demand among Otto’s magnates because of the opportunities for enrichment they offered. Their distribution was even the source of ferocious feuds within magnate families, when one branch received a nice juicy plum but another did not. Most famously, this was the origin of the bad blood between two brothers, Herrman and Wichman Billung. Herrman got the key appointment and was for ever loyal to Otto; jealousy led Wichmann throughout his long and bitter life into the camp of any opposition to Otto, whatever the issue.
⁴⁶

It is not the effects of expansionary policies upon the empires that we’re primarily interested in, however, but how the exploited populations responded to this asset-stripping. They reacted exactly as you might expect, attempting to resist imperial expansion outright, and/or to minimize its effects when total resistance was impossible. In particular – and this is why imperial exploitation is so relevant to political consolidation, the subject matter of this chapter – uniting several originally independent, small-scale political units into a smaller number of large ones was one of the most effective strategies available to those seeking to fend off unwanted imperial attention.

The best example is provided by what proved in the long term to be a failed state formation: the Elbe Slavs again. As we’ve just seen, they felt the full weight of Ottonian imperialism. In 983, however, taking advantage of the dynasty’s difficulties elsewhere, they rose in
massive and – in the short term – successful rebellion. Their resentment against Ottonian rule, and especially against the Church institutions that had been profiting so substantially from their exploitation, manifested itself in a series of atrocities against churches and churchmen that are lovingly chronicled in our Christian sources. What’s particularly striking about this revolt, though, is the element of political restructuring that was central to its success. When the Elbe Slavs fell under Ottonian domination, they comprised a group of small-scale political societies. The success of the revolt, however, was predicated on the generation of a new alliance among them, manifest in the new label ‘Liutizi’ which our sources start to give them in its immediate aftermath. The Liutizi were not a new people, but old ones reorganized. As their counterparts among the Germani on the fringes of the Roman Empire had come to appreciate so long ago, so had the Elbe Slavs learned from bitter experience that hanging around in larger numbers made it possible more effectively to resist imperial aggression.
⁴⁷

Nor, when any initial phase of expansion and conquest was over, was it necessarily any easier to have such imperial neighbours. The reign of Otto III was marked by a spell of excellent relations between himself and both the Bohemians and the Poles, culminating in the Emperor’s progress to the tomb of Adalbert. After Otto’s death, however, imperial policy changed dramatically. He left no son, and from the accession of his cousin Henry I in 1003 there followed some twenty years of pretty continuous warfare between the Empire and the Piast state, in which the new Emperor was happy to use the pagan Elbe Slavs as allies against his erstwhile Christian brothers. Henry, of course, had his reasons, but this kind of inconsistency in policy reflected the fact that populations beyond the Elbe were viewed as substantially second-class citizens, which meant that the desire to exploit them was always likely to be perceived as legitimate and hence to reassert itself. This underlying attitude was not informed by such a thoroughgoing, denigrating ideology as that of the Romans, whose entirely coherent, and equally unpleasant, vision of ‘barbarians’ allowed them to be treated like beasts, if that was convenient. The Poles and Bohemians were partly protected by being Christian. It was no accident that it was the pagans of the Elbe and Baltic regions, in later centuries, who would eventually feel the full brutal weight of an ideologically self-righteous form of imperialism: the so-called Northern Crusades
which saw Christian Teutonic knights, amongst others, burn and kill their way north and east. Nonetheless, even Christian Slavic states suffered from second-class status, and could never be sure that the instinctive imperial desire to profit from the exploitation of outsiders might not reassert itself at their expense.
⁴⁸
And, in fact, the diplomacy of the ninth and tenth centuries throws up many examples of the same kind of change in imperial policy that the Poles suffered from in the early eleventh.

In the later eighth century, for instance, when Charlemagne was engaged in his long and tortuous conquest of Saxony, one particular group of Elbe Slavs, the Abodrites, were key allies. Established on the Saxons’ eastern border, where the Carolingians were attacking from the south and west, the Abodrites provided an extremely useful second front, and Charlemagne was duly grateful for their support. In return he gave them extra territory, direct military and diplomatic support and trading privileges. Once Saxony had been absorbed into the Empire, and particularly when it became the seat of Empire, the Abrodites found themselves surplus to strategic requirements. Instead of useful allies, they started to look like potential subjects, and imperial policy swung 180 degrees. Even when they were not being conquered outright, aggressive diplomacy became the order of the day, reaching its culmination in a murderous banquet organized by one frontier commander, the Margrave Gero, at which thirty of their leading men were assassinated. This dwarfs the dinner-party assassinations even of the Roman era, which were regular events but usually took out only one leader at a time. The uncertainty of life on the edge of the Empire was central to the experiences of successive rulers of the Moravians in the next century, too. Take the early years of King Zwentibald. He first came to power with the help of the east Carolingians in 870; then, in just three years, as imperial policies shifted, found himself imprisoned for several months before we finally see him raiding Bavaria in retaliation for his treatment.
⁴⁹
It was living close to a powerful Empire but holding – in the view of a large section of its citizenry – second-class status that laid you particularly open to these kinds of dangerous changes of policy. It was always possible for some faction within the Empire’s ruling circle to make political capital for itself by championing a harder – and more profitable – line towards you.

Examples could be multiplied, but there’s no point. What’s interesting here is the overall effect of imperial predation on the societies
at the sharp end. The Elbe Slavs’ revolt provides a particularly arresting example of well-founded resentment in action, but the effects were similar elsewhere. The natural suspicion of the Moravian dynasty, for instance, shows up in the religious sphere. Along with many of our new dynasties, the new ruling line quickly decided to opt for Christian conversion. Rather than simply accepting it from the Carolingians, however, they explored every other possible avenue, famously importing the Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius, with papal blessing, in 863. This was done in the teeth of sustained Carolingian resentment, however, and shows very clearly the suspicion in which the Empire and all its doings were held. Eventually, after Methodius’ death, the Moravians were forced into religious line and his remaining disciples expelled in favour of Frankish clergy in 885, but the expectation of imperial exploitation remained, manifest not least in the incident of 882 with which this study began, when Zwentibald the Duke of the Moravians and his men captured the Frankish Counts Werinhar and Wezzilo and cut off their tongues, right hands, and genitals.

They were out for revenge because of the way Engelschalk had treated them when he had been in charge of the same frontier region, and were trying to prevent Engelschalk’s sons from seizing their father’s old job. The Moravians had an entirely coherent agenda here, and their revenge was very symbolic. I am obviously not privy to the mindset of your average ninth-century Moravian, but this was clearly a case, in the best Mafia tradition, of mutilation with a message. My best guess would be that cutting off the right hand and tongue emphasized that neither deed nor word could be trusted, while removing the genitals expressed the hope that this line would have no further progeny. Taken to these lengths, natural resentment against imperial military and diplomatic aggression could become a building block, both practical and ideological, by which new dynasties could extract consent for their rule. Becoming part of a larger entity always involved taking on obligations of service, but these might be acceptable if, as a result, the worst effects of predation were fended off. And although the Elbe Slavs and the Moravians provide the most explicit instances, there is every reason to suppose that imperial predation had the same effect in all of the border states: Poland, Bohemia and Denmark as well.