Frankish Empire
The
Frankish Empire or
Frankish realm, often just
Francia or
Frankia, was the territory of the
Franks from the
5th to the
10th century. The Franks were a Germanic people, almost unique in that they converted to the
Catholicism of
Rome instead of the
Arianism of most of the barbarian invaders of
Western Europe.
The various Frankish kingdoms were united by
Clovis I (481-511). The kingdom was repeatedly divided among several kings; the division of
843 after the death of
Louis the Pious turned out to be permanent. The resulting
Western and
Eastern Kingdoms eventually developed into the nations of
France and
Germany respectively.
Since the term "empire" properly applies only to times after the coronation of
Charlemagne as
imperator in
800, and since the unified kingdom was repeatedly split and reunited, most historians prefer to refer to "Frankish kingdoms" or the "Frankish realm."
Sixth-century historian
Gregory of Tours mentions
Chlodio as the first Frankish king who started the conquest of Gaul by taking
Camaracum (
Cambrai) and expanding the border of Frankish territory south to the
Somme. This probably took some time;
Sidonius relates that
Aëtius surprised the Franks and drove them back (probably around
431). This period marks the beginning of a situation that would endure for many centuries: the Germanic Franks ruled over an increasing number of
Gallo-Roman subjects.
But the Franks were still divided. The two major tribes were the
Salians, who lived near the coast in
Gallia Belgica and
Germania Inferior, and the
Ripuarians, who lived along the
Rhine. Each tribe (and there were many others) had its own ruler, usually titled "king." In
451, Aëtius called upon his Germanic
foederati (allies living on Roman soil) to help fight off an invasion by the pagan
Huns. The Salians answered the call, the Ripuarians fought on both sides as some of them lived outside the Empire. Gregory's sources tentatively identify one
Meroveus as king of the Franks and possibly a son of Chlodio. Meroveus was succeeded by
Childeric I, whose grave, rediscovered in
1653, contained a ring that identified him as king of the Franks. Hereafter, the history of the Franks is less murky.
Childeric's son
Clovis engaged in a campaign of consolidating the various Frankish kingdoms in Gaul and the
Rhineland, which included defeating
Syagrius at the
Battle of Tolbiac in
486, and decisively defeating the Visigothic kingdom of
Toulouse in the
Battle of Vouillé in
507. This victory ended Roman control in the Paris region. In the
Battle of Vouillé (
507), Clovis, with the help of the
Burgundians, defeated the
Visigoths, expanding his realm eastwards down to the
Pyrenees mountains.
The conversion of Clovis to
Trinitarian Roman Christianity, after his marriage to the Catholic Burgundian princess
Clothilde in
493, may have helped to increase his standing in the eyes of the
Pope and the other orthodox Christian rulers. Clovis' conversion signalled the conversion of the rest of the Franks. Because they were able to worship with their Catholic neighbours, the newly-
Christianized Franks found much easier acceptance from the local Gallo-Roman population than did the
Arian Visigoths,
Vandals or
Burgundians. The
Merovingians thus built what eventually proved the most stable of the successor-kingdoms in the west.
On his death, Clovis partitioned his kingdom among his four sons, according to Frankish custom. Over the next two centuries, this tradition would continue. Even when multiple Merovingian kings ruled, the kingdom â€" not unlike the late
Roman Empire â€" was conceived of as a single realm ruled collectively by several kings and the turn of events could result in the reunification of the whole realm under a single king.
The Merovingian chieftains adhered to the Germanic practice of dividing their lands among their sons, and the frequent division, reunification and redivision of territories often resulted in murder and warfare within the leading families. So though Clovis drove the Visigoths out of Gaul, at his death in
511, his four sons divided his realm between themselves, and over the next two centuries his descendants shared the kingship.
The Frankish area expanded further under Clovis' sons, eventually covering most of present-day France, but including areas east of the Rhine river as well, such as
Alamannia (today's southwestern Germany) and
Thuringia (from
531).
Saxony, however, remained outside the Frankish realm until conquered by
Charlemagne centuries later.
After a temporary reunification of the separate kingdoms under
Clotaire I, the Frankish lands split once again in
561 into
Neustria,
Austrasia, and
Burgundy, which had been absorbed into the Frankish realms through a combination of political marriage and force of arms.
In each Frankish kingdom the
Mayor of the Palace served as the chief officer of state. A series of premature deaths beginning with that of
Dagobert I in
639 led to a series of under age kings. By the turn of the
8th century, this had allowed the Austrasian Mayors to consolidate power in their own hereditary regency, laying the foundation for a new dynasty: their descendants the
Carolingians.
*
Clotaire I 558â€"
561*
Clotaire II 613â€"
629*
Dagobert I 629â€"
639Clotaire II defeated
Brunhilda and her offspring and reunified the kingdom. However, in
623 he created the sub-kingdom of
Austrasia, in order to appease particularistic forces and also to secure the borders. His son and successor
Dagobert I emulated this move by appointing sub-kings for
Aquitaine in
629 and
Austrasia in
634.
*
Childeric II 673â€"
675*
Clotaire III 661â€"
662*
Theuderic III 679â€"
691*
Clovis IV 691â€"
695*
Childebert III 695â€"
711*
Dagobert III 711â€"
715*
Chilperic II 715â€"
720*
Theuderic IV 721â€"
737*
Childeric III 743â€"
751 |
Map of the Carolingian Empire. |
However, it must be noted that, from the days of Pepin the Elder, the King was effectively powerless, and the Mayor of the Palace, one of the Carolingians, effectively ruled the Realm. But this came to a clear head during the reign of
Charles Martel, forever remembered in history as Christianity's champion at the
Battle of Tours. It was so obvious that the Carolingians ruled, that at the end of his life,
Charles Martel did not even bother appointing a King, which his family had been doing for generations. The in-name-only (by then called the do-nothing King), had died, and Martel was so secure in his ultimate power he did not even bother to appoint a successor) Not caring about titles, he merely called himself simply maior domus and princeps et dux Francorum, ("First or Dominant Mayor and Prince of the Franks") and ruled royally without a King at all. Indeed, historians have commented on his remarkable dispensing with royal prerequisites and pomp, while maintaining absolute power. As the historian Charles Oman says (The Dark Ages, pg 297), "he cared not for name or style so long as the real power was in his hands." Echoing Oman, Norwich has said:
He kept no court, cared not for titles, and the thought of a crown amused him. All that interested him was the true essence of power, and what could be done with it. He believed he had a mission to preserve what his ancestors had struggled so to build after Rome's fall, and intended that it not be destroyed during his stewardship. For a man of such enormous powerâ€"the real master of today's Europe at his life's endâ€"he cared naught for show, but only for results. Indeed, Martel so cemented his place in history with his ferocious defense of Christian Europe against what had been an undefeated, and was considered, an undefeatable, Muslim Army, which had incorporated Berber lighthorse cavalry with the heavy Arab cavalry, against a Christian Europe which lacked the stirrup to use such forces, that Gibbons called Charles Martel "the paramount prince of his age." For a man who technically never took a royal title, that stands as the ultimate compliment to his accomplishments.
His son, however, wanted the title his father cared nothing about, so long as he had the power. This finally resulted in Martel's son, Pepin the Short asking the Pope, "who should be King, he who has the power, or he who has the name?" Shortly thereafter, the Pope, who depended on Frankish armies to assure his own power, crowned Pepin as the first Carolingian King of the Franks, and his son, Charlamagne, went on to become the first Holy Roman Emperor, though it was actually a Frankish Empire, and its tributories and allies.
The term "Carolingian Empire" may be used to refer to the realm of the
Franks under the dynasty of the
Carolingians, but the term "Empire" applies particularly to the times after the coronation of
Charlemagne as
Emperor in
800 by
Pope Leo III.
The "Carolingian Empire" ended with the death of the
Holy Roman Emperor Charles III the Fat in 888, although some Carolingians managed to gain the Imperial crown in later times.
The Carolingian kingship traditionally begins with the deposition of the last Merovingian king, with papal assent, and the accession in
751 of
Pippin the Short, father of
Charlemagne. Pippin had succeeded his own father,
Charles Martel, as
Mayor of the Palace of a reunited and re-erected Frankish kingdom comprised of the formerly independent parts, which Charles Martel had managed to reunite, and expand, during a war filled lifetime. It must be noted most historians believe the Carolingian Empire truly was founded by Charles Martel, who united all the fractions and factions of the Franks, defeated all their enemies, and incorporated most of what would become the Empire under Frankish dominion. It must be noted that Charles Martel had dispensed even with the pretense of a King during his lifetime, simply ruling without one, but his son, not having his father's gigantic reputation as Christiandom's savior for his victories against invading Muslim armies at Tours and Narbonne, named a King initially. But he grew discontent, as his own confidence grew with military success - he finished his father's work and drove the Emirite of Cordova completely over the Pyrenees back into what is now Spain, and defeated the Saxons, and he had the Frankish army proclaim him King, after the Pope, who depended on those same armies to protect him, had endorsed Pippin as the real King of the Franks.
Pippin reigned as an elected king. Although such elections happened infrequently, a general rule in Germanic law stated that the king relied on the support of his
leading men. These men reserved the right to choose a new "kingworthy" leader out of the ruling clan if they felt that the old one could not lead them in profitable battle. While in later France the kingdom became hereditary, the kings of the later
Holy Roman Empire proved unable to abolish the
elective tradition and continued as elected rulers until the Empire's formal end in
1806.
Pippin solidified his position in
754 by entering into an alliance with
Pope Stephen II, who presented the king of the Franks a copy of the forged "
Donation of Constantine" at Paris and in a magnificent ceremony at
Saint-Denis anointed the king and his family and declared him
patricius Romanorum ("protector of the Romans"). The following year Pippin fulfilled his promise to the pope and retrieved the
Exarchate of Ravenna, recently fallen to the
Lombards, and returned it, not to the Byzantine emperor again, but to the Papacy. Pippin donated the re-conquered areas around Rome to the Pope, laying the foundation for the
Papal States in the "
Donation of Pippin" which he laid on the tomb of St Peter. The papacy had good cause to expect that the remade Frankish monarchy would provide a deferential power base (
potestas) in the creation of a new world order, centred on the Pope.
*
Pippin the Younger (
751â€"
768)
Upon Pippin's death in
768, his sons, Charles and
Carloman, once again divided the kingdom between themselves. However, Carloman withdrew to a monastery and died shortly thereafter, leaving sole rule to his brother, who would later become known as
Charlemagne or Charles the Great, a powerful, intelligent, and modestly literate figure who became a legend for the later history of both France and Germany. Charlemagne restored an equal balance between emperor and pope.
From
772 onwards, Charles conquered and eventually defeated the
Saxons to incorporate their realm into the Frankish kingdom. This campaign expanded the practice of non-Roman Christian rulers undertaking the conversion of their neighbours by armed force; Frankish Catholic missionaries, along with others from
Ireland and
Anglo-Saxon England, had entered Saxon lands since the mid-
8th century, resulting in increasing conflict with the Saxons, who resisted the missionary efforts and parallel military incursions. Charles' main Saxon opponent,
Widukind, accepted baptism in
785 as part of a peace agreement, but other Saxon leaders continued to fight. Upon his victory in
787 at
Verdun, Charles ordered the wholesale killing of thousands of
pagan Saxon prisoners. After several more uprisings, the Saxons suffered definitive defeat in
804. This expanded the Frankish kingdom eastwards as far as the
Elbe river, something the
Roman empire had only attempted once, and at which it failed in the
Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (
9 AD). In order to more effectively Christianize the Saxons, Charles founded several
bishoprics, among them
Bremen,
Münster,
Paderborn, and
Osnabrück.
At the same time (
773â€"
774), Charles conquered the
Lombards and thus could include northern Italy in his sphere of influence. He renewed the Vatican donation and the promise to the papacy of continued Frankish protection.
In
788, Tassilo,
dux (duke) of Bavaria rebelled against Charles. Quashing the rebellion incorporated Bavaria into Charles' kingdom. This not only added to the royal
fisc, but also drastically reduced the power and influence of the
Agilolfings (Tassilo's family), another leading family among the Franks and potential rivals. Until
796, Charles continued to expand the kingdom even farther southeast, into today's
Austria and parts of
Croatia.
 |
Charlemagne's kingdom survived its founder and covered much of Western Europe from 795 until 843 when a treaty split it amongst his grandsons: Central Franks ruled by Lothair I (green), East Franks ruled by Louis the German (yellow), and Charles the Bald led West Franks (purple). |
Charles thus created a realm that reached from the
Pyrenees in the southwest (actually, including an area in Northern Spain (
Marca Hispanica) after 795) over almost all of today's France (except
Brittany, which the Franks never conquered) eastwards to most of today's Germany, including northern
Italy and today's
Austria. In the hierarchy of the church, bishops and abbots looked to the patronage of the king's palace, where the sources of patronage and security lay. Charles had fully emerged as the leader of Western
Christendom, and his patronage of monastic centres of learning gave rise to the "
Carolingian Renaissance" of literate culture. Charles also created a large palace at Aachen, a series of roads, and a canal.
On Christmas Day,
800,
Pope Leo III crowned Charles as "
Emperor of the Romans" in Rome in a ceremony presented as if a surprise (Charlemagne did not wish to be indebted to the bishop of Rome), a further papal move in the series of symbolic gestures that had been defining the mutual roles of papal
auctoritas and imperial
potestas. Though Charlemagne, in deference to
Byzantine outrage, preferred the title "Emperor, king of the Franks and Lombards", the ceremony formally acknowledged the Frankish Empire as the successor of the (Western) Roman one (although only the forged "Donation" gave the pope political authority to do this), thus triggering a series of disputes with the Byzantines around the
Roman name. After an initial protest at the usurpation, in
812, the
Byzantine Emperor Michael I Rhangabes acknowledged Charlemagne as co-Emperor. The coronation gave permanent legitimacy to Carolingian primacy among the Franks. The
Ottonians later resurrected this connection in
962.
Upon Charlemagne's death on
January 28,
814 in
Aachen, he was buried in his own
Palace Chapel at Aachen. At his death, the Carolingian Empire was larger in terms of land mass than the original Roman Empire. Unlike the Romans, who had never ventured beyond the Rhine after the disaster at
Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (
9 AD). , Charlemagne crushed all Germanic resisitence and extended his realm completely to the Elbe, and influenced events almost to the Russian Steppes.
Later Carolingians
Charlemagne had several sons, but only one survived him. This son,
Louis the Pious, followed his father as the ruler of a united Empire. But sole inheritance remained a matter of chance, rather than intent. When Louis died in
840, the Carolingians adhered to the custom of
partible inheritance, and the
Treaty of Verdun in
843 divided the Empire in three:
# Louis' eldest surviving son
Lothair I became Emperor and ruler of the Central Franks. His three sons in turn divided this kingdom between them into
Lotharingia,
Burgundy and (Northern)
Italy. These areas would later vanish as separate kingdoms.# Louis' second son,
Louis the German, became King of the East Franks. This area formed the kernel of the later
Holy Roman Empire, which eventually evolved into modern
Germany. For a list of successors, see the
List of German Kings and Emperors.# His third son
Charles the Bald became King of the West Franks; this area became the foundation for the later
France. For his successors, see the
List of French monarchs.
Subsequently, at the
Treaty of Mersen (870) the partitions were recast, to the detriment of Lotharingia.
On
December 12,
884,
Charles the Fat reunited most of the Carolingian Empire, aside from
Burgundy.
In late
887, his nephew,
Arnulf of Carinthia revolted and assumed the title as King of the East Franks ('Germany'). Charles retired and soon died on
January 13,
888.
Odo, Count of Paris was chosen to rule in the west ('France'), and was crowned the next month.
The Carolingians were 10 years later restored in France, and ruled until 987, when the last Frankish King,
Louis V, died
*
Louis the Pious (
814â€"
840)
The three surviving sons of Louis the Pious divided the empire at the
Treaty of Verdun in
843.
West Francia was the land under the control of
Charles the Bald. It is the precursor of modern France. It was divided into the following great fiefs:
Aquitaine,
Brittany,
Burgundy,
Catalonia,
Flanders,
Gascony,
Gothia (
Septimania), the
ÃŽle-de-France, and
Toulouse. After
987, the kingdom came to be known as France, because the new ruling dynasty (the
Capetians) were originally dukes of the ÃŽle-de-France.
Middle Francia was the territory ruled by
Lothair I, wedged between East and West Francia. The kingdom, which included the
Kingdom of Italy,
Burgundy, the
Provence, and the west of
Austrasia, was an unnatural creation of the Treaty of Verdun, with no historical or ethnic identity. The kingdom was split on the death of
Lothair II in
869 into those of
Lotharingia, Provence (with Burgundy divided between it and Lotharingia), and
Italy.
East Francia was the land of
Louis the German. It was divided into four duchies:
Swabia (
Alamannia),
Franconia,
Saxony and
Bavaria (including
Moravia and
Carinthia); to which after the death of Lothair II were added the eastern parts of
Lotharingia. This division persisted until
1268, the end of the
Hohenstaufen dynasty.
Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor was crowned on
2 February 962, marking the beginning of the
Holy Roman Empire ([
translatio imperii). From the
10th century, East Francia became also known as
regnum Teutonicum ("
Teutonic kingdom" or "Kingdom of
Germany"), a term that became prevalent in
Salian times.The title of Holy Roman Emperor was used from that time, beginning with
Conrad II.
Stability did not exist day-to-day. While casual violence existed to a degree in late Roman times, the introduction of the Germanic practice of the blood-
feud to obtain personal justice led to a perception of increased lawlessness. The Roman systems of taxation and administration were gradually replaced by the
feudal system. Literacy practically disappeared outside of churches and monasteries, despite Charlemagne's efforts to revive learning.
The Catholic Church exercised a huge moral influence. One manifestation of that influence was found in the replacement of slavery with the somewhat more humane system of
serfdom.
During the Merovingian period, the Gallo-Romans and the Franks were governed by separate law codes. However, in the ninth century, territorially-based legal systems emerged in parts of the realm.
Trade declined after the fall of the Roman Empire, and economic life centered on self-sufficient
villas. However, foreign merchants (such as Syrians and Vikings) carried goods such as papyrus and silver into the Frankish Empire. In addition, domestic trade grew around market towns.
The standard of living of the peasants was appalling; however, the occasional church holidays and fairs ensured that peasant life was not joyless.
Agricultural production began to grow after the eighth century with the introduction of a
heavy plough. This paved the way for a period of demographic and economic recovery, and the end of the Dark Ages.
Western Germania came under Frankish control by the sixth century. The eastern portions of Merovingian Germania consisted of often autonomus duchies. Efforts were made to spread Christianity among the local peoples, and Frankish colonists entered these regions.
The Saxons and Avars remained independent until Charlemagne invaded their territories, conquered them, and converted them to Christianity.
*
The Frankish Kingdom (Timeline and maps)
*
The Dissolution of the Frankish Empire (Timeline and maps)
