Europe: A History (64 page)
Charlemagne’s lifeblood had been the cement of the realm. His inheritance was immediately disputed by his son and grandsons. Repeated partitions ensured its early disintegration. In 817 the partition of Aachen provoked civil war; in 843, following protracted family slaughter, the Treaty of Verdun produced a three-way split between the surviving grandsons. Charles the Bald received the Western, Romance sector—Neustria, Aquitaine, western Burgundy, and the Spanish March. Lothair I, King of Italy, received the title of Emperor together with the ‘Middle Kingdom’, consisting of Austrasia, eastern Burgundy, Provence, and Italy. Lewis the German received the bulk of the eastern, solidly Germanic sector (see Map 12). The Treaty of Verdun created the core of both the future Germany and the future France. The ‘Middle Kingdom’ was left a bone of eternal contention between them. Charlemagne’s ultimate legacy was not just the example of fragile unity but, equally, the prospect of unending strife,
[KRAL]
The feuding of the Carolingians or ‘Karlings’ created an opportunity which the Vikings were quick to exploit. The summer of 841 saw them sailing up the Seine to plunder Rouen. In 843–4, following the Treaty of Verdun, they wintered on the island of Noirmoutier. In 854 the new city of Hamburg was burned, and Paris was sacked while Charles the Bald took refuge on Montmartre. In 847 the ancient city of Bordeaux was taken hostage for years. In 852 an ominous precedent was set
when Charles the Bald, having trapped the Viking host in their camp at Jeufosse near the Seine estuary, paid them off with gold and permanent grants of land. He was rewarded by repeated raids which Orléans alone was able to resist.
KRAL
C
HARLEMAGNE
ravaged the Slavs on at least four fronts. He reduced the Abotrites and Sorbs, to the east of the Elbe, in 789. He forced the Czechs of Bohemia to pay tribute in 805–6, and the Carinthian Slavs of the Sava and Drava likewise. In respect for the great conqueror, the Slavs adopted his name as their word for ‘king’. Karol has become
kral
in Czech,
król
in Polish,
korol’
in Russian. The Franks gave the Slavs their first model of Christian kingship.
(Kral even
means ‘king’ in Turkish.)
In the West, Charlemagne was adopted as the presiding monarch of numerous medieval legends, the supreme hero of the
chansons de geste.’
1
Already in the ninth century, a monk of St Gall composed a largely fabulous chronicle,
De Gestis Karoli Magni
. Soon Charlemagne was to be portrayed by the troubadours as the ubiquitous champion of Christendom, swinging his sacred sword ‘Joyeuse’, smiting the infidel, riding at the head of his companions—Roland, Ganelon, Naimes of Bavaria, Ogier the Dane, Guillaume of Toulouse, Turpin the battling Archbishop of Reims.
In the French tradition the ‘twelve peers’ of Charlemagne consisted of the three Dukes of Normandy, Burgundy, and Aquitaine, the three Counts of Champagne, Toulouse, and Flanders, and the six spiritual peers, the Bishops of Reims, Laon, Châlons, Beauvais, Langres, and Noyon.
In the German legends Charlemagne was often said to be sleeping, waiting for the call to wake and save his beloved subjects from their ills. In the Bavarian tale he is seated on a chair in the Untersberg, as on his throne in the chapel at Aachen. The end of the world will be nigh when his beard has grown thrice round the table before him. In the German language, Charlemagne’s name has been given to the constellation of the Great Bear—the
Karlswagen
. In Old English, the ‘Charles Wain’ was an alternative name for the constellation of the Plough.
Later, both in France and Germany, Charles the Great was hailed as the progenitor of the nation’s royalty. For the French ‘Charlemagne’, for the Germans ‘Karl der Grosse’, he was seen not as a Frank but as a patriotic French or German leader. His example was invoked at Napoleon’s imperial coronation in 1804. His portrait occupies the first place in the gallery of the German emperors painted in 1838–52 in the
Kaisersaal
at Frankfurt.
2
In the twentieth century, Charles the Great has been more regarded as a symbol of Franco-German reconciliation. In 1943, when the Nazis formed a new division of French volunteers for the Waffen SS, or in 1955 when the Council of Europe funded a Prize ‘for services to the cause of European unity’, the organizers appealed to the same name—to ‘Charlemagne’.
In 864, by the Edict of Pîtres, Charles the Bald at last gave orders for all localities to build fortifications, and for a task force of cavalry to be on hand. But relief was still far off. Year after year the internecine wars of the Carolingians were studded with royal deaths, with temporary partitions, and with Viking raids of ever greater insolence. From 867 to 878 the Danes were preoccupied in England. In 880 they ravaged the valley of the Elbe. In 885–6,40,000 Vikings poured out of 700 longships drawn up on the present-day Champ de Mars, and laid siege to Paris for eleven months. Count Odo conducted a heroic defence, only to find that the Emperor, Charles the Fat, had paid off the Vikings with 700 lb of silver and packed them off into Burgundy.
In the British Isles, which had escaped the attentions of Charlemagne, the impact of the Vikings was particularly severe. The Danish invasions created divisions which persisted for 200 years. Egbert, King of Wessex, had been recognized as
Bretwalda
or overlord of Britain in 828. Within a generation, however, the Danes were challenging the supremacy of Wessex. Alfred the Great, King of Wessex (r. 849–99), spent a lifetime containing them. At one point, in 878, he was forced to hide in the marshes of Athelney in Somerset. But battles in that same year enabled him to partition the country. The Treaty of Wedmore created the
Danelaw
—a vast area subject to Danish rule. From then on, until the fateful year of 1066, England was to be disputed by the English house of Wessex and the Danes. In the tenth century, after the expulsion of Eric Bloodaxe, the last Danish king of York, Viking raids were resumed with a vengeance. In 994 London was beset by a combined force of Danes and Norwegians. From 1017–35 Knut, or Canute, ruled over a vast North Sea empire linking England with Scandinavia. The old Anglo-Saxon kingdom enjoyed a brief respite under Edward the Confessor (r. 1042–66), founder of Westminster Abbey. Edward’s death in 1066 prompted a war between three rival claimants—Harold Hardrada of Norway, Harold Godwinson of Wessex, and William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy.
Whilst the English battled the Danes, the rest of the British Isles witnessed a long, complex struggle between Vikings and Celts. Fluctuating federations of Northmen fought fluctuating leagues of Celtic princes. In Ireland, the Celts held the interior against fortified Viking settlements on the coast. After a century of mayhem, they finally gained the upper hand under the much-sung Bhriain Boroimhe (Brian Bora, r. 1002–14), who left the kingdom to be disputed between the O’Brians, the O’Neills, and the O’Connors. There followed an era when the Irish again ruled the whole of Ireland unchallenged for 150 years. An
Ard Rih
or ‘High King’ of Erin held authority over the lesser kings of the ‘Fifths’ of Meath, Munster, Leinster, Ulster, and Connaught; the ancient Brehon Laws, which had originated in prehistoric times, were written down to provide a firm framework of administrative practice and social custom; and the traditional life of the
fine
or
‘clans’ held sway under its assemblies, its judges, and the growing influence of an increasingly institutionalized Church. In Wales, the Celtic principalities were trapped between Vikings on the coasts and unrelenting English pressure on the inland borders. From the eighth century onwards they were held behind the great Dyke built by Offa, King of Mercia, and were largely cut off from their kinsmen in Strathclyde and Cornwall. They found champions and temporary overlords in the much-sung Rhodri Mawr (Roderick the Great, d. 877) and Grufrydd ap Llywelyn (Griffith, d. 1063).
[LLANFAIR]
In the north of Britain the Gaelic King of Kintyre, Kenneth MacAlpin (d.
c
.860) was the first to join Picts with Scots, and thereby to launch the concept of a united ‘Scotland’. After that, a three-sided contest emerged between the Gaels of the highlands, the English of the lowlands, and the Norsemen of the outer isles. It was in 1040 that Macbeth, Lord of Moray, who is said to have made a pilgrimage to Rome, determined to murder Duncan, King of the Scots:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
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The history of Britain’s Celts was recorded by their bards, and by chroniclers such as Marianus Scotus (
c
.1028–83). It was of little interest to the English, like William Shakespeare, until a much later date.
In the midst of the chaos, five Frankish kingdoms were steadily drifting apart, as each was left to fend for itself. In Neustria, royal authority declined to the point where hereditary fiefs began to emerge in each of the main counties—in Toulouse (862), in Flanders (862), in Poitou (867), in Anjou (870), in Gascony, Burgundy, and Auvergne. These were the kernels of the later French provinces. In 911 Charles the Simple, King of France, lifted the Viking threat by signing the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte with the veteran sea-king Hrolfe or Rollo. The origins of ‘Normandy’ seem to have lain in a French version of the
Danelagh
in England. In the eastern kingdom, Arnulf of Carinthia cleared Germany of Norsemen, but only by importing the Magyars. A kingdom of upper Burgundy had crystallized round the court of Count Rudolf at St Maurice/Moritz, and a kingdom of lower Burgundy under Count Boso at Arles. In Italy, where Moorish ‘saracens’ from Sicily played Vikings, successive invasions by the Byzantines in 874–95, the Neustrians in 877, and the Austrasians in 894–6 left all political authority in shreds. By 900 Count Berengar of Friuli was left in sole possession through a process of sanguinary elimination. Western historians have often described those final decades of the ninth century as the ‘darkest hour’ of the Dark Ages.
LLANFAIR
A
PART
from being wonderfully expressive, the place names of medieval Wales provide a point of entry into the study of historical developments, such as land settlement, which took place before the era of documentary records. They are informative as well as curious.
In the centuries prior to the English conquest (see p. 408), the land in Wales was subject to the competing jurisdictions of the native princes, of the Anglo-Norman marcher lords, and of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The princes, who were entirely Welsh by culture, ruled over the five principalities of Gwynedd, Powys, Deheubarth, Morganwg, and Gwent. The marcher lords, with a mixture of English and French connections, dominated the east and the south. The bishops, who were educated in Church Latin, were based on the four dioceses of Bangor, St Asaph, St David’s, and Llandaff. By analysing the interplay of Welsh and non-Welsh names with the intersection of secular and ecclesiastical authority, historians can build up a picture of how, when, by whom, and for what purposes settlements were founded or extended.
1
Some places in Wales, for example, have names which only exist in the Welsh form and which are clearly ecclesiastical in origin. The commonest of them all is
Llanfair
, meaning ‘St Mary’s’. Others in this category would be
Betws-y-Coed
(Chapel in the Wood) or
Eglwys Fair
(St Mary’s Church). More common are place-names which are obviously ecclesiastical in origin but which have bilingual forms. Such are
Llanbedr/Lampeter
(St Peter’s), Caergybi/Holyhead in Anglesey, or
Llanbedr Fynydd/Peterston-
super-Montem in Glamorgan. Then there are the places with bilingual names of secular origin. Such are Abertewe/Swansea,
Cas Gwent/
Chepstow, and
Y Gelli
Gandryll/Hay-on-Wye in Brecknockshire. Modern ‘Hay’ derives from the medieval Norman
La Haie Taillée
(Clipped Hedge).
The final category comprises bilingual forms with mixed ecclesiastical and secular associations. This would include
Llanfihangel Troddi/
Mitchell Troy in Monmouthshire and
Llansanffraid-ar-Ogwr/St
Bride’s Minor in Glamorgan.
The most famous of Welsh place names, however, has no medieval origins. When the London-Holyhead railway was opened in 1850, the first station on the Anglesey side of the Menai straits was at the village of Llanfair. Seeking fame and tourists, the station-master decided to improve its name, concocting an ‘ancient’ Welsh circumlocution which made the station’s nameboard longer than the station’s platform. What the British Post Office calls Llanfair P. G. ‘Jones the Station’ called
Llanfairpwllgwyngyll-gogerychwerndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
. Tourists are told that it stands for ‘St Mary’s in a hollow of white hazel near to a rapid whirlpool and to St Tysilio’s Church by the red cave’.
2
In those Western lands, disorder begat feudalism. One cannot easily distinguish causes from effects; but the fragmentation of political authority and the defence-lessness of the localities encouraged a series of political, legal, social, economic, and military developments which together form what later theoreticians have called ‘the feudal regime’. In reality, feudalism was not a uniform system: problems of definition and variation abound. One of the most influential modern summaries of the subject had to be called
Qu’est-ce que laféodalité?:
Feudalism, in the technical sense, may be regarded as a body of institutions creating and regulating the obligations of obedience and service … on the part of one free man (the vassal) towards another free man (the lord), and the obligations of protection and maintenance on the part of the lord with regard to his vassal.
6
