Carloman

Betrayal in the family

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Now let’s crack open a tale of deformity, hatred between brothers, scheming wives and priests, broken promises, and family betrayal. The place is not Mar-a-Lago, but Francia in 769. Pepin the Short, the first true Carolingian king, is dead, felled by a fever after eight years waging a war of scorched earth against Aquitaine.1.Covered extensively, starting here. Before Pepin’s death in 768 both Charles and his brother Carloman, “by your father’s order, joined in lawful marriage” two good Frankish women.2.King, Caroline code, Letter 2, 770, p271. Charles first pulled the trigger, so to speak, and sometime in 7693.No one really knows, but the consensus is prior to 770. his wife Himiltrude gave birth to a healthy son, whom Charles named Pippin, for his father.4.Yes, I know I spell them differently. But it’s the same name.

Naming his first-born son after his father showed that Charles intended this boy to inherit the kingly title in some form or another. Carloman’s wife Gerberga, not to be outdone, gave birth to a son in 770.5.King, Petau Annals, 770, p.149. What name did they bestow? I’m sure you can guess – the conflict between Charles and Carloman had started before their father had cooled in his crypt. Carloman will get his own post soon, but suffice it to say that after a visit from his mother in 772 Carloman died, and his wife and children (including Pippin) fled to Lombardy.6.As noted before, I think this family is much darker than do conventional historians.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Covered extensively, starting here.
↑2 King, Caroline code, Letter 2, 770, p271.
↑3 No one really knows, but the consensus is prior to 770.
↑4 Yes, I know I spell them differently. But it’s the same name.
↑5 King, Petau Annals, 770, p.149.
↑6 As noted before, I think this family is much darker than do conventional historians.

Saxon Wars 2: Charles, lawgiver and butcher

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We can’t know Charles’ state of mind as he made his way home after the Spanish debacle in 778, but you can be sure he was not happy. What would have been a long and difficult journey home was made so much worse by the massacre in the Pyrenees. He must have been angry, frustrated, and saddened as the miles passed by and the weeks elapsed. At some point in the late summer, but definitely not before September1.The Roncevalles ambush occurred on August 15, he had made it as far as Auxerre, which is almost 500 miles from Roncevalles. It was at Auxerre, as he was “demobilising the rest of the troops,”2.Revised Royal Annals, year 778, King, p. 114. that the king received word that the Saxons were again in revolt.

This would not have been surprising. As we’ve seen, Franks and Saxons had been fighting for generations, and while the Franks usually held the upper hand in battle, the Frankish armies withdrew to Francia after combat. That gave the Saxons the opportunity to regroup, foment rebellion, and launch counterattacks. Prior to the Spanish expedition, however, King Charles had determined to complete the conquest and conversion of the Saxon people, and so he could not let this latest insurrection go unpunished, no matter how late in the year, or tired the army.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 The Roncevalles ambush occurred on August 15
↑2 Revised Royal Annals, year 778, King, p. 114.

The Saxon Wars I: let’s do this

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 No war taken up by the Frankish people was ever longer, harder, or more dreadful…1.Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, ch. 7, p.20

Beginning in 772, Charlemagne waged war against the Saxons for more than thirty years. It was, as his biographer notes, the longest and most vicious of all the wars he undertook. After literally centuries of cross-border skirmishing, of which Charlemagne’s father and grandfather were frequent participants, he decided to finish the job once and for all. Why did he turn his eye to the Saxons? There were plenty of other opportunities, including Spain, Brittany, or southern Italy.

If Carolingian naval power were only a little more robust he could have looked north to Britain, but that’s a tale for a novelist.2.Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare, pp. 249-254. Charles Martel launched small fleets at Frisia, and Charlemagne fought along the Rhine, but neither ever attempted a military channel crossing. Commerce between Britain and the mainland was extensive, however, so the knowledge existed.

Prof. Bernard Bachrach, who has studied Carolingian grand strategy in detail, believes that Charlemagne was motivated by both religion and imperial ambition as he planned the Saxon conquest. If he could conquer the regions of the former Roman Empire, then (hopefully) the pope would anoint him as a new emperor of the west. His claim would be further buttressed and enhanced by an extensive (and, as it turned out, ruthless) campaign of Saxon Christianization.3.Personal correspondence with Prof. Bachrach, February 4, 2018.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Einhard, Life of Charlemagne, ch. 7, p.20
↑2 Bachrach, Early Carolingian Warfare, pp. 249-254. Charles Martel launched small fleets at Frisia, and Charlemagne fought along the Rhine, but neither ever attempted a military channel crossing. Commerce between Britain and the mainland was extensive, however, so the knowledge existed.
↑3 Personal correspondence with Prof. Bachrach, February 4, 2018.

The Saxon Wars: prologue

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In the last post we looked at Saxon society, insofar as a non-written culture can be explored. In this post I’ll examine relations between Saxons and Franks. For reasons both cultural and geographic, there was always friction between the two peoples, and the historical record is filled with skirmishes. But don’t forget that war is always more interesting than peace, and stories about goodwill between Saxon and Frank weren’t recorded. Nonetheless it does become apparent that there was no love lost across the Rhine.

The Liber Historiae Francorum (the anonymous Book of the Franks) recounts a Saxon “rebellion” in 555, and the Merovingian King Chlotar’s subsequent expedition to levy Frankish punishment. What is not clear is what the Saxons were rebelling against. About fifteen years later “King Chilperic went with his brother with an army against the Saxons…” Around the year 623 the Saxon Bertoald and King Dagobert I of Austrasia fought to a standstill, until Dagobert’s father arrived with another army which tipped the scales. The king then “devastated the entire land of the Saxons and killed their people. He did not leave alive there any man who stood taller than his sword which is called a long sword.”1.Liber Historiae Francorum, trans. Bachrach, pp. 69, 78, 97-99.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Liber Historiae Francorum, trans. Bachrach, pp. 69, 78, 97-99.

The biggest, fakest donation ever

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O Constantine, what evil did you sire,
not by your conversion, but by the dower
that the first wealthy Father got from you!1.Dante, The Inferno, trans. Mark Musa, canto 19, lines 115-117, p.244.

Such was Dante’s lament as he surveyed the ditch of the Simonists, head down in flaming pits. He believed that the corruption and greed of the 14th century church could be laid at the feet of the Roman Emperor Constantine, who, in a grand gesture of piety in 335, donated (there’s that word again) all of Italy to the church and the popes that would lead her. That wealth, Dante believed, created a culture of ecclesiastical greed that had infected and weakened the church in his own time.

The pledge in question is called the Donation of Constantine, for that emperor who converted to Christianity in 317 AD. He later moved the capital of the empire to the ancient city of Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople. The Donation is a document of some 4700 words, in twenty chapters, and it is written in the first person, allegedly by Constantine himself. In the first eleven chapters the author lays out the foundations of Christian theology, and relates the miraculous healing of “a mighty and foul leprosy” that led to his conversion. Pope Sylvester, the man who led him through his experience, is addressed frequently, as are “all his successors, the pontiffs who are about to sit upon the chair of Saint Peter until the end of time…”2.Donation of Constantine, in Carolingian Civilization, A Reader, ch.1, p.14.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 Dante, The Inferno, trans. Mark Musa, canto 19, lines 115-117, p.244.
↑2 Donation of Constantine, in Carolingian Civilization, A Reader, ch.1, p.14.