Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (21 page)

Fredegar’s narrative closes with the story of Flaochad,
genere Franco
(an ethnic Frank) and mayor of the palace, who sought revenge against a Burgundian patrician called Willebad. The two faced up with their followers outside the walls of Augustodunum:

Berthar, a Transjuran Frank… was the first to attack Willebad. And the Burgundian Manaulf, gnashing his teeth with fury… came forward with his men to fight. Berthar had once been a friend of his, and now said, ‘Come under my shield and I will protect you…’, and he lifted his shield to afford cover. But [Manaulf  ] struck at his chest with his lance… When Chaubedo, Berthar’s son, saw his father in danger, he threw Manaulf to the ground, transfixed him with his spear, and slew all who had wounded his father. And thus, by God’s help, the good boy saved Berthar from death. Those dukes who had preferred not to set their men upon Willebad now pillaged his tents… The non-fighters took a quantity of gold and silver and horses and other objects.
⁴⁸

As one leading scholar puts it, ‘The marvel of early medieval society is not war, but peace.’
⁴⁹

By Fredegar’s time, the Merovingian monarchs were being reduced to mere ciphers in the hands of those mayors and counts of the royal palaces. What is more, the political centre of gravity was passing to Frankish Austrasia (eastern Francia). Dagobert, who ruled over Neustria (the ‘new western land’), was to become the butt of a lovely French nursery rhyme: ‘
Le Bon Roi Dagobert / A mis sa culotte à l’envers’
(‘Good King Dagobert / put on his trousers inside out’).
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He also established Paris as the main capital. A crucial battle at Tertry in Picardy in 687 ensured Burgundy’s subordination to Austrasia.

In the early eighth century, a movement for Burgundian separatism, started by the battling Bishop Savaric of Auxerre, provoked the very outcome which it had sought to avoid. Charles Martel (688–741), founder not only of the Carolingian dynasty but also, in large part, of the Carolingian Empire, descended on Burgundy to bring it to heel. Arriving as victor of the epoch-making battle at Tours against the Saracens in 732, he proceeded to expel them equally from their footholds in Provence and Languedoc. The storming of Saracen-held Arles in 736 was one of the high points of his campaign:

After assembling forces at Saragossa the Muslims had entered Frankish territory in 735, crossed the River Rhône and captured and looted Arles. From there they struck into the heart of Provence, ending with the capture of Avignon… Islamic forces [raided] Lyon, Burgundy, and Piedmont. Again Charles Martel came to the rescue, reconquering most of the lost territories in two campaigns in 736 and 739… [He] put an end to any serious Muslim expedition across the Pyrenees [forever].
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He also put an end to hopes that the
Regnum Burgundiae
might rise again at any point soon.

In the century following Charles Martel, the Frankish Empire flourished, faltered and fell. Charlemagne spent much of his time either in the north, in Aachen, or fighting on the peripheries of his lands against Moors, Slavs and Avars, and had little direct involvement with his Burgundian domains. Yet in 773 he assembled a great army in Burgundian Geneva for his Lombard War. Emboldened by favourable messages from the Roman pope, his forces marched over the Alps in two huge columns, one crossing the pass of the Mont Cenis, the other the Great St Bernard. Having reduced Pavia, the capital of the Lombards, by a long siege, he climbed the steps of St Peter’s in Rome on his knees as a penitent. Later, he created the first Papal State.
⁵²

In the tradition of his ancestors, Charlemagne planned to divide his empire between his sons. In the event, since only one son survived him, the empire stayed intact until it was divided in 843 between three of his grandsons. The Treaty of Verdun created divisions that would persist through much of European history. One grandson took West Francia, which was to develop into the Kingdom of France. Another took East Francia, which formed the springboard for a nascent Germany. The eldest grandson took a long strip of territory in the centre, together with the imperial title. Lothar’s ‘Middle Kingdom’ was equally composed from three informal sections. One piece of territory in the north stretched from the North Sea to Metz, where the name of Lotharingia (Lorraine) would live on. The second section, in the centre, was an extended ‘Burgundia’, including Provence. The third was a long swathe running south through Italy as far as Rome. As an integrated unit, Lothar’s realm proved to be a brief contrivance, yet its constituent parts long evaded permanent absorption either into France or into Germany. Burgundia was one of the most resistant.

Anyone grappling with the Carolingian legacy needs to keep the number ‘three’ to the fore; threefold partitions were performed three times over. Most students grasp that each of Charlemagne’s grandsons received a one-third share, and it is not hard to remember that Lothar’s ‘Middle Kingdom’ consisted of three sections. It is the third step, however, which is often forgotten. Within fifty years of the Treaty of Verdun, the former
Regnum Burgundiae
, now forming the middle section of the Middle Kingdom, was itself divided into three. (The mnemonic for the exercise is ‘3×3×3’.) This last tripartite division took place in three stages – in 843, 879 and 888 (contemporaneous with Alfred the Great’s Anglo-Saxon England) – and it produced three new entities: the Duchy of Burgundy in the north-west, the Kingdom of Lower Burgundy in the south, and the Kingdom of Upper Burgundy in the north-east.

The initial carving up of Charlemagne’s empire in 843, therefore, was but one step in a much longer process. Although Lothar took the greater part of the sometime Burgundian kingdom, including Lyon, about one-eighth of it was awarded to West Francia. This strategically important award, consisting of the upper valley of the River Saône, including Guntram’s centre at Chalon, was one of the few clauses of the Treaty of Verdun to prove permanent, and gave its new rulers a bridgehead on the southern slopes of the continental divide. Henceforth West Frankish forces, and later the armies of France, enjoyed a secure point of entry to the road to Italy.

At Verdun, West Francia’s acquisition was originally given the traditional name of
Regnum Burgundiae
, but the designation proved a dead letter and for a time the area was not awarded any special status. A permanent solution was only found in the 880s, when West Francia adopted a comprehensive administrative structure made up of duchies and counties. Seven ‘primitive peers’ were created, each with the rank of
dux
or duke (governor), and each heading a string of dependent counts. The Duchy of Burgundy took its place alongside Aquitaine, Brittany, Gascony, Normandy, Flanders and Champagne. It represented Bryce’s Burgundy No. X, although in chronological order it was the fourth.

Predictably, the duchy’s affairs did not run entirely smoothly. The central figure in a long series of contorted conflicts was Richard the Justiciar (
c
. 850–921), a brother of the West Frankish queen, Richildis, wife of Charles the Bald. Richard, whose family base was Autun, travelled to Rome during Charles’s imperial campaign, and was eventually rewarded with the governorship of (West Frankish) Burgundy with the title first of
marchio
(marquis, that is, border lord) and then of duke. His deathbed confession became famous: ‘I die a brigand, but have saved the lives of honest men.’

From 1004, the kings of France took direct control of the duchy from the heirs of the Justiciar. Sometimes the duchy was granted in fief, sometimes held by the king in person. Until 1361, the list of dukes contained twelve names, starting with Robert le Vieux (d. 1076) and finishing with Philippe de Rouvres (r. 1346–61). The list of subordinate vassals included the counts of Chalon, of the Charolais, of Mâcon, Autun, Nevers, Avallon, Tonerre, Senlis, Auxerre, Sens, Troyes, Auxonne, Montbéliard and Bar; each of their houses would forge a long, colourful story of its own. With some delay, the duchy’s administrative centre settled at Dijon, which lies on a south-flowing tributary of the Saône, appropriately called the Bourgogne, and conveniently located for easy access over the Plateau de Langres into Champagne, or upstream to the headwaters of the Seine and the road to Paris.
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The duchy was already the home of venerable monastic foundations, but some new names were now added. The house of Cluny, which followed the Rule of St Benedict, is often seen as the motherhouse of Western monasticism, and was founded in 910; it was the
alma mater
of three or four popes.
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The abbey of Tournus, another tenth-century foundation, sheltered the relics of the martyred St Philibert. The abbey of Cîteaux, mother of the Cistercian Order, was founded in 1098. St Bernard (1090–1153), Church reformer and founder of the Knights Templar, arrived there as a young man,
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and on 31 March 1146 preached the Second Crusade from the hall of the abbey of Vézelay. The abbey of Pontigny on the River Yonne dates from St Bernard’s time.

The monks of these Burgundian monasteries are widely credited with the revival of the neglected art of viticulture. They were not the original pioneers, since the donation of a vineyard to the Church was recorded in the time of King Guntram. But they themselves, at the communion service, were wine consumers; and on the slopes of the Côte d’Or or of the ‘Côtes de Beaune’ they patiently developed vineyards of unsurpassed quality, inventing both the production methods and the time-honoured vocabulary of the
cru
, the
terroir
and the
clos
. Burgundy reds are grown from the
pinot noir
grape; most that now head the list of Grands Cru, such as the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti near Vosne, once the property of the abbey of Saint-Vivant, or Aloxe-Corton, which was launched by the cathedral chapter of Autun, or Chambertin, founded by the abbey de Bèze, started as medieval ecclesiastical enterprises. The white wines of Chablis were invented by the monks of Pontigny. The Clos de Vougeot, first planted by the monks of Cîteaux, knew just one proprietor from 1115 to the French Revolution.
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Chanter le vin
– ‘celebrating wine in song’ – has formed part of the duchy’s heritage ever since. Many of France’s timeless drinking songs, like ‘
Chevalier de la Table Ronde
’, or ‘
Boire un petit coup
’, derive from Burgundy, and they celebrate a culture of good wine, good food, good company and above all good cheer:

Le Duc de Bordeaux ne boit qu’ du Bourgogne
,

mais l’ Duc de Bourgogne, lui, ne boit que de l’eau,

ils ont aussitôt échangé sans vergogne

un verr’ de Bourgogne contr’ le port de Bordeaux
.

‘The Duke of Bordeaux drinks only Bourgogne, / but the Duke of Bourgogne he drinks water alone, / so neither felt shame when they sought to exchange / a glass of Bourgogne for the port of Bordeaux.’)
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Meanwhile, to the east of the nascent duchy, the main part of the former Burgundian kingdom had lapsed into chaos. Lothar I’s death in 855 was followed by repeated splinterings, reunifications and re-splinterings. One short-lived territorial reorganization, however, left a lasting mark. Under Lothar II (r. 835–69), the southern and south-western districts, including Lyon and Vienne, were added to a new
Regnum Provinciae
, which thereby acquired the label of ‘Lower Burgundy’. In consequence, the more northerly and north-eastern districts took on the name of ‘Upper Burgundy’. The frontiers soon changed, but the names stuck.