"Oathbreakers
By Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry
Harper, 304 pages, $32
Charlemagne is known as "the father of Europe," and little wonder. The Frankish king and conqueror was crowned emperor by the pope on Christmas Day in 800, and thus the Holy Roman Empire came into being. It would persist, in various forms, for a millennium, an institution critical to the continent's political and religious self-definition.
Such persistence, though, was not foreordained. When Charlemagne died in 814, a question arose: Who would inherit his title and, not least, his lands? The Franks, speaking what is now called Old High German, occupied much of what had been the Roman Empire in the West: that is to say, modern France and much of Germany, extending to what is now the Czech Republic, as well as northern Italy and parts of modern Spain. It was a vast territory and an unwieldy one, given that the great Roman roads were, at this point, in poor condition.
Charlemagne's authority had been such that the empire had held together, though even he met with rebellion. His eldest surviving son, Louis the Pious, had a harder time -- a harbinger of the even bigger trouble that came in the next generation, with Charlemagne's grandsons.
In "Oathbreakers," Matthew Gabriele and David Perry describe a civil war that erupted only briefly in early medieval Europe but that had substantial and lasting effects. As prelude, the authors, both medieval historians, give an overview of Charlemagne's reign and a chronicle of Louis the Pious's ruling ordeals.
The generational saga is fascinating and well worth tracking to its fateful conclusion. It should be said that, through no fault of the authors, it isn't always easy to follow -- not only was the empire extensive but many of the first of its chroniclers wrote long after the events they relate. Most of the Frankish lords were illiterate. Charlemagne learned to write in later life, but he was the exception. Nearly 300 years after him, Henry I of England, the youngest son of William the Conqueror, was known as "Beauclerc" because he could at least write his name.
It is not surprising that Louis the Pious, a man who lacked his father's authority and military prowess, had trouble maintaining order in the lands he governed. It didn't help that his wife was thought by some to be a witch. The most mettlesome aspect of his reign came from his sons once they had become adults and began to have ambitions of their own. Louis was in fact compelled by his eldest son, Lothar, to abdicate and do penance, confessing his faults. He soon recovered his primacy, though, because his younger sons, Louis the German and Charles the Bald, preferred his rule to their elder brother's.
When Louis died in 840, Lothar succeeded him as emperor, but the empire itself was, in effect, divided up. Lothar's direct control was restricted to Italy and to the two capitals -- Aachen, in present-day Germany, and, nominally, Rome -- as well as to a long strip extending from one to the other. Louis the German governed the imperial territories north and east of the Rhine, and Charles the Bald, by some way the youngest of the three, held most of what is now France.
Not surprisingly, this tripartite arrangement didn't suit Lothar, who at the very least wished to have superior authority as eldest heir to their father and emperor. So he marched an army north to compel his brothers to recognize their subsidiary status.
This move may sound aggressively militant, but it was not obviously so at first. As Messrs. Gabriele and Perry make clear, it was not unusual for Frankish armies to come together. Though war might be threatened, it rarely broke out. Accommodations would be offered. Tranquility would be restored, for the time being anyway.
But not this time. A battle was fought at Fontenoy, in Burgundy, in June 841. It was a horrific and bloody encounter in which Emperor Lothar was defeated by his brothers. We don't know how many combatants were involved. A figure of 40,000 on either side was given by one chronicler, but the number is surely an exaggeration. Getting that many men (and horses) into the field and supplying them after days of marching was beyond the capacities of medieval armies.
What we do have is a poem composed (in Latin) by one Angelbert, apparently a nobleman, perhaps from Aquitaine, who served in the emperor's army. He writes: "Let not that accursed day be counted in the calendar of the year, / rather let it be erased from all memory. . . . No slaughter was ever worse on any field of war."
The Battle of Fontenoy didn't lead to a prolonged conflict. Perhaps the horror of Franks fighting Franks in so terrible an encounter was too alarming. It did, for a time, stiffen the opposition to Lothar. Louis the German and Charles the Bald took now-fabled oaths of alliance at Strasbourg in 842 -- believing that Lothar had himself broken earlier oaths of family loyalty.
In any case, peace was made among the brothers at Verdun a year later. The original division of the empire was reaffirmed, and Lothar retained the title of emperor.
But Charlemagne's vast imperial lands would never recoalesce, and the separate parts would have ever widening trajectories. The Frankish kings, heirs of Charles the Bald, would soon be speaking French. [1] Louis the German's subjects already spoke early German.
The significance of Fontenoy was recognized in the 19th century -- in the so-called Age of Nationalism -- by the great historian of the French Revolution, Michelet, and by the German historian Leopold von Ranke. Messrs. Gabriele and Perry quote Ranke noting that it was remarkable that the battle took place at all and arguing that it decided a "great question" concerning "the relationship between the empire and the hereditary powers."
The question was decided "in favor of the latter." The oaths taken at Strasbourg, Ranke felt, were an emblem of "emerging nationalities."
It could be said that much of the history of early medieval Europe can be traced to this dramatic -- if too little known -- episode. In "Oathbreakers," Messrs. Gabriele and Perry give it an erudite and readable presentation.
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Mr. Massie is the author of "The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain."" [2]
1. "The victory of Charles the Bald separated France from the Western Empire, and founded the independence of French nation."
2. The Grandsons Didn't Get Along. Massie, Allan. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 23 Dec 2024: A15.
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