charlemagne

God wants us to kill Saxons

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The hand of God appears with remarkable frequency in the Royal Frankish Annals. In battle after battle the annalist notes that a battle was won “by the hand of God,” or “by God’s help.” (Oddly, these invocations don’t begin until Charlemagne assumes the throne. Didn’t God smile upon his father Pepin?). But the Saxon wars seem to have inspired God with particularly manifest miracles of aid.

The streams had all dried up during the hot summer in 772, when Charlemagne destroyed the Irminsul. But the job of destruction was not yet completed. What to do?

And there was a great drought, so that no water was to be had in the above-said place where the Irminsul stood. And while the aforesaid glorious king wanted to stay there for two or three days in order to destroy the sanctuary completely, but his men had no water, suddenly, by the bounty of divine grace, there poured forth along a particular watercourse – this was at midday, while the whole army was resting; no one knew what was happening – such an abundance of water that the whole army had sufficient.1.RFA, 772.

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Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 RFA, 772.

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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Two Halves Of a Kingdom – Austrasia

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Let’s take a look at the basic political geography of the Franks.martel_map

Two kingdoms made up the core of the Frankish lands, Neustria in the west and Austrasia in the east. They can be very roughly compared to France and Germany, with many caveats. We’ll start with Austrasia, traditionally the larger, stronger of the two, and the homeland of both the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties.

Austrasia occupied the drainage area of the lower Rhine, including the Main and the Meuse rivers. The Franks did not, however, control the mouths of the Rhine and the Meuse, rather leaving those under control of the Frisians. They did control the coast south of the Meuse, down to approximately the Franco-German border today. When you think of Austrasia, think of Belgium, Luxembourg, the eastward part of the Netherlands, and north-western Germany. The countryside tends to open and flat. The German army took this path in the opening blow of the First World War in their march on Paris (the infamous “right wing”).

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