Heart of Europe: A History of the Roman Empire (37 page)

Lorraine’s dukes continued to participate in imperial politics in the century after the Staufers’ demise, but French kings exerted growing pressure, for example giving Duke Raoul a house in Paris in 1336 to bind him closer to their court. Charles IV released the duke from his obligations to the Empire in 1361, but like many such acts, this was not definitive, especially as the duke was still tied to the Empire through his possession of the town of Pont-à-Mousson. The extinction of the ruling Alsatian line of dukes in 1431 gave Sigismund the opportunity to reassert Lorraine’s full obligations to the Empire and the duchy was included in the new infrastructure developed by imperial reform to distribute fiscal and military burdens in the fifteenth century.
³⁵

Flanders was detached from Lower Lorraine in 1007, while the rump duchy fragmented during the Investiture Wars and was replaced by the new duchies of Geldern, Limburg and Brabant by 1138. The new configuration was confirmed by Brabant’s victory over the archbishop of Cologne at Worringen in 1288, ending over 120 years of Cologne expansion across the Lower Rhine and Westphalia. Brabant acquired Limburg, but in turn was defeated by Geldern and Jülich in 1371, thus stabilizing the region as a patchwork of medium-sized duchies. Meanwhile, the old rights of the German kings in Lorraine had been assigned to the count Palatine of the Rhine (
comes palatinus Rheni  
), who was given princely status in 1155, later consolidated as one of the secular prince-electors.

Ducal Burgundy

The last and greatest of the new minor powers to emerge from the former Lotharingian lands was ducal (French) Burgundy, which passed in 1363 to a junior branch of the Valois family ruling France since 1328. Beginning with Philip the Bold, within sixty years the new Burgundian dukes escaped French suzerainty and acquired Europe’s most heavily urbanized area north of the Alps. In addition to their own ability, key factors in their success included their intervention in France’s civil war between 1420 and 1435 and an alliance with Charles IV’s son and successor, King Wenzel, in 1378, which brought the eventual acquisition of Luxembourg, completed in 1443. Dynastic marriages netted Flanders, Artois, Franche Comté (all 1383) and Brabant (1430), while Hainault, Holland and Zeeland were conquered in 1433, and Charolais (1390) and Namur (1421) were purchased (
Map 15
).

Burgundian power peaked under Charles ‘the Bold’, who bought Alsace (1469) and conquered Geldern, Limburg and Zütphen (all 1473). Charles came closest to resurrecting the old middle kingdom, but under radically altered circumstances. Burgundy’s rapid ascent alarmed France and also Lorraine and the Swiss, who combined in the 1440s to resist its eastwards expansion. Frederick III declined Charles’s petition to be recognized as king. Any chance of realizing this dream ended with Charles’s death in battle against the Swiss at Nancy in January 1477. The subsequent Franco-Habsburg war over the Burgundian succession ended in compromise in 1493, confirming French possession of the original ducal Burgundy (Bourgogne), while the Habsburgs scooped all the duke’s other lands.

THE NEW KINGDOMS

The Northern and Eastern Marches

The Empire was bounded to the north and east by peoples who had remained outside both the Frankish realm and Latin Christianity and who imparted very different characteristics than those present along the western and southern frontiers. To understand how these areas developed, we need to jettison the interpretations of Germanic conquest and various struggles for national self-determination that have
since the nineteenth century so often been projected onto the history of this part of Europe. For most of the early Middle Ages, German kings intervened along these frontiers primarily to meet the expectations of their
existing
subjects, rather than conquer new ones.
³⁶

The Carolingians were beset by skilful, ruthless raiders after 800: Vikings ravaged West Francia and Frisia, Saracens plundered southern France and Italy, Avars and later Magyars raided deep into northern Italy and southern Germany, while the Slavs were a constant threat along the Elbe. All these peoples used unconventional tactics and often locally superior numbers. The Vikings and Saracens used the rivers to penetrate the hinterland – the former reaching as far as Lorraine in 891. Their own homes were either distant, or almost entirely absent in the case of the Magyars, who remained nomadic into the later tenth century.
³⁷
Infighting amongst the Carolingians simply widened the opportunities to plunder during the 880s.

Payments of the so-called ‘Danish money’ (
Danegeld
) to the Vikings by the relatively wealthy West Frankish kings after 845 could be quite successful in curbing violent raiding. However, such tribute was also considered unkingly and contributed to growing criticism of the western Carolingians. Where possible, kings preferred military action, which could also satisfy their own lords’ expectations of plunder.
³⁸
Such ideas were paramount in the development of the marcher lordships once the Carolingian Empire stopped expanding in 814. These militarized zones were partly outside the duchy structure and were entrusted to margraves (marquises) whose jurisdictions were often quite large and were endowed with important royal benefices to sustain them.
³⁹
Some margraves became powerful figures in imperial politics, despite their location on the Empire’s geographic periphery. The Ekkehardiner family rose to prominence in charge of the Saxon marches of Meissen and Merseburg after 985. A measure of their influence is that they persuaded Pope John XIX to move the bishopric of Zeitz to their castle of Naumburg in 1028. They were already considered potential contenders for the German royal title in 1002, but preferred to obtain further land in return for loyal service until their line was extinguished in 1046 (
Map 4
).

Sections of the marches included fixed defences, notably the
Limes Saxoniae
built in 810 from Kiel south to the Elbe, and the Danewerk earth wall extended between the Schlei and Treene rivers in 929 to stop
Danish raiders heading south. Such extensive works were difficult to build and maintain. Elsewhere, defence relied mainly on fortified monasteries and castles; initially wooden palisades and towers were replaced by stone constructions in the eleventh century. Strongpoints offered places of refuge, but could have the perverse effect of attracting raiders hoping to take the booty stored in them. There is some controversy whether the Ottonians settled armed farmers on the south-east frontier in the 930s; the Habsburgs certainly did this six centuries later to oppose the Ottomans. Nonetheless, it is clear that the Ottonians developed defence in depth, with castles and posts covering important river crossings and intended to delay mounted raiders who rarely had the capacity for a prolonged siege. Such positions were not merely defensive, since they provided bases to launch raids in the other direction. Henry I and his successors repeatedly led expeditions to extort tribute from the Slavs, partly to redistribute amongst their lords, but also to assert prestige and signal their retention of divine favour.
⁴⁰

Slavs and Magyars

Interaction with the Slavs and Magyars along the Empire’s eastern frontier helped create the new kingdom of Bohemia, which became part of the Empire, and those of Poland, Hungary and Croatia, all of which ultimately remained outside it. Like their western European counterparts, these kingdoms subsequently claimed distinct identities based on myths of origins. These stories convey something of the tangled relationship between all these new states and the Empire. It was understood that Kievan Russia, Poland and Bohemia derived a shared heritage from three Slavic brothers. Rus travelled the least, stopping at Kiev to found the Ruthene peoples who eventually spread to the Carpathian Mountains. Lech settled in Gniezno between the Wartha and Vistula rivers and became the progenitor of the Poles, while Czech pushed on to discover
terra Boemia
– the land of honey (Bohemia).
⁴¹

The Slavs to the north formed numerous powerful confederacies rather than kingdoms. Collectively known as the Wends, they in fact numbered several peoples. The Abodrites controlled the area between the Elbe and Denmark under their own duke. The Havelians along the Havel river occupied what became Brandenburg. The Veleti, or Liutians (
Lutici
), were a looser confederation emerging during the tenth
century in what later became Pomerania along the Baltic coast. They were the principal force behind the rising that also drew Abodrite support and swept away much of the Ottonian presence along the lower Elbe in 983. The importance of restoring Ottonian prestige is demonstrated by the fact that the six-year-old Otto III accompanied the first retaliatory expedition (986), while another four major campaigns were launched between 991 and 997.
⁴²
These were all punitive expeditions intended to reassert prestige, especially in Germany, rather than serious efforts to reconquer the area. The Sorbs were an important group who refused to join the rising. They lived just north of Bohemia in Lusatia, deriving its name from their word for marsh, and were the first to be Christianized permanently. By contrast, the Ranians refused Christianity and though restricted to Rügen Island off Pomerania, they remained significant through their influence on Baltic trade.

Other Slav confederacies occupied areas south of Bohemia. Ironically, it was Charlemagne’s victory over the Avars controlling Pannonia (the Hungarian Plain) by 800 that allowed several of these groups to expand.
⁴³
The Carinthians occupied the eastern Alps above the Drava river, while the Croats emerged from other, looser groupings on the Adriatic coast during the late ninth century.

All these peoples underwent a similar demarcation of power and territory between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. Like the Carolingians and Ottonians they built castles, making their lands harder to conquer. Relations could be violent, notably with the second major rising along the Elbe in 1066, and the Wendish Crusade after 1147. However, gradual acceptance of Christianity from the tenth century offered a route to more peaceful engagement with the Empire. It remained unclear prior to the thirteenth century whether this interaction would end with a people’s incorporation within the Empire, or recognition as a separate realm beyond it.

The Frankish eastward expansion had the largest impact in the south, where the Carinthian Slavs were incorporated as a border march in 828. Elsewhere, the imposition of tribute was not necessarily a precursor to subjugation – especially as its purpose was usually prestige rather than annexation. The Bohemians and Moravians used the Carolingian civil wars to escape their tributary status imposed around 800. The Moravians established their own ‘Great Empire’ in the later ninth century in the vacuum left by Charlemagne’s destruction of the Avar
Confederacy, while the Bohemians resumed raiding in 869.
⁴⁴
Both were soon under pressure from the Magyars, a Finno-Ugric people from the Volga who themselves were being pushed westwards by the Turkic Pechenegs sponsored by Byzantium. The Franks called them
Ungari
(Hungarians) after their ‘Confederation of Ten Arrows’ (
On-Ogur  
), a name which, in turn, reflects their military organization as swift mounted archers skilled in hit-and-run tactics. Overrunning Pannonia within a few years of their arrival in 895, the Magyars soon controlled the lucrative east–west trade in slaves, food and livestock, supplementing this with plunder from raids deep into southern Germany and Italy after 899. By 926, Henry I paid tribute to secure a temporary end to their depredations.

Although the Moravian empire collapsed in 906, the Magyar intrusion indirectly benefited the Bohemians and Poles by pushing trade northwards to follow the Cracow–Prague route, safe on the other side of the Carpathians. The new wealth promoted greater political centralization favouring the Premyslids controlling Prague, who were recognized by the Franks as counts in 871. The discovery of silver at Jihlava (Iglau) in Moravia and then at Kutná Hora in Bohemia increased Premyslid influence, and gave them an advantage over their poorer German counterparts. Having lost ground mid-century, Christianity was again accepted in Bohemia during the 890s, and over the next four centuries the Premyslids married 19 German princesses, becoming a prominent part of the Empire’s elite.
⁴⁵
The Premyslids were already recognized as hereditary dukes in 895 and ruled Bohemia until their extinction in 1306. The emperor had no crown lands, monasteries or castles in Bohemia, and never visited it on the customary royal progression prior to the fourteenth century.
⁴⁶
Bohemia developed its own identity focused on the martyrdom of Prince Wenceslas I and it served as an important conduit for Latin Christianity’s penetration further south and east. Nonetheless, Bohemia remained within the imperial church with its bishops at Prague and Olmütz initially under Mainz jurisdiction.

Poland and Hungary

The Piasts occupied a similar position in Cracow to the Premyslids in Prague, becoming the dominant Polish lordly family between 842 and 1370. They embraced new ideas transmitted from the Empire through
Bohemia, including the status of duke adopted by Mieszko I, who married a Premyslid princess and accepted baptism in 966, an act still celebrated as the birth of Polish Catholicism.
⁴⁷
The Piasts were not trying to create an independent Poland – a concept entirely alien to the early Middle Ages. However, they were prepared to work with the Empire as a means of securing and enhancing their own status relative to local and neighbouring lords. Not only did they have the Premyslids as an example, but the Croat elite secured recognition as a separate kingdom in 925 in return for recognizing Latin rather than Byzantine Christianity. Mieszko established a bishopric based in Gniezno, the Piast capital until 1039, and in 990 dedicated his land to the papacy as a means of asserting autonomy whilst joining Christendom’s princely elite.