Events

Uncertain birth of a king

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Charlemagne’s death, funeral, tomb and will are described in great detail by Einhard. A couple of posts ago I talked about the bones in Charlemagne’s tomb, and how almost thirty years of study had finally come to the conclusion that the bones belonged, in fact, to the great man himself. The death of an emperor was an event of great import. Obviously the birth of the first son of a king, the grandson of a king-maker, was documented in as much detail, right?

Wrong. Even the date of Charlemagne’s birth was an unanswerable question in his own lifetime. “I believe it would be improper [for me] to write about Charles’s birth and infancy, or even his childhood, since nothing [about those periods of his life] was ever written down and there is no one still alive who claims to have knowledge of these things.”1.Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, ch.4, in Dutton, Charlemagne’s Courier, p.4.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, ch.4, in Dutton, Charlemagne’s Courier, p.4.

Charlemagne destroys a pagan shrine

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In the spring of 772 Charlemagne held the yearly gathering of the great in the town of Worms, on the Rhine river. From there he gathered an army and traveled north, to the Saxon fortress of Eresburg. After taking the fortress he pushed deeper into Saxon territory. He must have had good intelligence or local guides, for he “came to the Irminsul, destroying that sanctuary and carrying off the gold and silver which he found there.”1.RFA, year 772. The Annals, as always so terse, have little else to say about a skirmish that kicked off a war that would last more than thirty years.

What was it that Charlemagne had done? It is difficult to say, exactly. Irminsul is a Germanic word that roughly translates as “large pillar.” Other uses of the word over the centuries indicate a pillar or column, made of stone or wood. In and of itself a trifle, but this Irminsul had great spiritual meaning.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 RFA, year 772.

Bertrada of Laon – Not Mother of the Year

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Bertrada of Laon is one of the very few women of the century about whom we can know anything more than just a name and a marital disposition. But from what we can see of her, particularly one series of events late in her life, she must have been a formidable lady.

She was born sometime between 710 and 727, in Laon, France, of noble parents. After that, we get nothing until she reappears as the wife of Pepin about 741, and the details immediately get fuzzy. No one is sure if she was Pepin’s first or second wife. In fact, it is hard to be sure just what a wife was back then, as the line between wife and concubine was not well defined. Also fuzzy were the rules on who could marry whom, based on how closely they were related. Always a problem when the 1% keep marrying each other.

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To Depose A King, Part Two

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By 750, nine years after his father’s death, Pepin’s grasp of Francia was strong, but not ironclad. He and his brother Carloman had reinstated the Merovingian kingship in 743 with the elevation of Childeric III, probably as a way to validate and legitimize their rule of the kingdom. They had quashed the various rebellions that had erupted once Martel left the scene. When Carloman decided to abdicate his rule in Austrasia in 746, Pepin was left in sole control, but there were rumblings through the land.

Pepin’s first son Charles (Charlemagne) had been born around 747 or 748, but he was illegitimate, as Pepin did not marry Bertrada until 749. Although Carloman had abdicated his share of the realm, he and Pepin had first agreed that Carloman’s son Drogo would eventually hold authority in his stead. This meant that there was a potential power struggle ahead, once Drogo claimed Austrasia. In addition there was the problem of Grifo, Pepin and Carloman’s half-brother who had been granted some territory on the death of Martel, but had been pushed out. Grifo was still around and making trouble, and even allied himself with Waifar of Aquitaine.

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The Most Famous Battle of the Eighth Century

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Let’s look at the most famous battle of the eighth century, and one of the most famous in world history, the Battle of Tours.

First we have to figure out what to call it. Battles are usually named for a location, but the archaeologists have yet to pinpoint the exact location of this battle. It was fought somewhere between the towns of Poitiers and Tours, and so you’ll see it called either one of those. There was another Battle of Poitiers fought during the Hundred Years War, which is one reason why more people refer to the Battle of Tours, to avoid confusion.

The battle was fought in 732 between Charles Martel, father of Pepin and grandfather of Charlemagne, and the Arab ‘Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi of the Umayyad dynasty. The result was a sharp defeat for the Arabs, who withdrew to their kingdoms south of the Pyrenees and along the Mediterranean. Let’s set the stage:

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