Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (22 page)

The Kingdom of Provence, created in 879, otherwise known as the Kingdom of Lower Burgundy –
le Royaume de Basse-Bourgogne
– lasted with one short break for only fifty-four years. Its territory combined the Rhône valley from Lyon to Arles, together with the original Roman province up to the foothills of the maritime Alps. Its cultural make-up was half-Burgundian and half-Provençal, thereby assisting a new form of speech called Franco-Provençal. Its main administrative centre was Arelate (Arles). It was the fifth Burgundian state and the fourth kingdom (No. III according to Bryce).

The early years of this kingdom were closely tied to the career of Count Boso (r. 879–87), who rose to power in the same way as his younger brother, Richard the Justiciar, through his links with the Frankish king and would-be emperor, Charles the Bald. His first post was as count of Lyon, but during Charles’s Italian campaign of 875–7 he received the high office of
missus dominicus
(envoy or ambassador), and gained close ties with the papacy. Pope John VIII adopted him as his son, and Boso accompanied him on his journey to West Francia in 878. In the next year, however, when West Francia lost its second king in eighteen months through unexpected illnesses, Boso decided to cut loose. Returning to Provence, where he had probably already held office, he persuaded the local bishops and nobles to organize the Synod of Mantaille and to elevate him to the rank of a sovereign monarch through a ‘free election’. He used the formula ‘
Dei Gratia id quod sum
’ (‘By God’s Grace, this is what I am’). Boso’s temerity was challenged, but the experiment survived. After he died in 887 and was buried at Vienne, his heirs, the ‘Bosonids’, spawned three influential lineages.
⁵⁸
Two relatives ruled Provence after him: his son, Louis the Blind (r. 887–928), who was also king of Italy and nominal emperor, and his son-in-law, Hugh of Arles (r. 928–33).

Count Boso’s realm commanded the rich river trade of the Rhône valley, and the main points of entry and exit between the continental interior and the Mediterranean. Its ancient cities brimmed with civilization and commerce. True, the coasts were regularly ravaged by Saracen corsairs; many prime sites on the Riviera had been infested with pirates and the sea trade to Italy was unsafe. ‘Robber barons’ and castle lords controlled many of the mountain valleys. Even so, any ambitious ruler like Boso would have known that he had acquired a highly promising piece of real estate. The Christian Church provided a thread of continuity and stability. Each of the main cities had its ancient bishopric, and monasticism was solidly established. The island abbey of Lerinum (Lérins), founded
c.
410 by St Honortus, had produced many clerics who served throughout southern Gaul.
⁵⁹
Much diminished, it was now subordinated to Cluny.

Parallel developments were occurring in Upper Burgundy. There, the initiative was taken by another Frankish adventurer, Rudolf of Auxerre (859–912). He and his associates, who were all connected by marriage to the Bavarian Guelphs, gave notice of rising German interest. None of the assorted overlords of central Lotharingia were strong, and opportunity beckoned. Hence, having failed in a plan to seize Alsace, Rudolf withdrew to St Maurice (-en-Valais), which was the base of his personal lands, and conspired with leading nobles and clergymen over a different manoeuvre. In 888 an assembly was convened at St Maurice to elect him ‘king of Burgundy’, following the precedent set in Provence by the Synod of Mantaille. Rudolf consolidated his holdings by abandoning his claim on Alsace in return for East Francian recognition of his own sovereignty. He also made a number of prudent marriage alliances. His sister married Richard the Justiciar. One daughter married Louis the Blind and another married Boso II, count of Arles and subsequently margrave of Tuscany. The Burgundians were sticking together.

By the end of the ninth century, therefore, three separate Burgundies had appeared. One, the duchy, lay within the West Frankish orbit. The other two, the kingdoms of Upper and of Lower Burgundy, were freshly independent. The limits of Rudolf’s dominion were described in the terminology of the day as lying between ‘
Iurum et Alpes Penninas… apud Sanctum Mauritium
’. For this reason, the kingdom was sometimes labelled ‘Trans-Juran Burgundy’ to distinguish it from the duchy in ‘Cis-Juran Burgundy’, but these ancient labels are confusing. In reality, Rudolf’s territory covered both flanks of the Jura and stretched right across the modern Swiss cantons of Valais, Vaud, Neufchâtel and Geneva, together with Savoy and northern Dauphiné. The administrative centre was St Maurice. Here was the fifth of the Burgundian kingdoms, No. IV on Bryce’s list.

‘Upper Burgundy’ is hard to imagine without shedding the modern concepts of ‘France’, ‘Germany’ and ‘Switzerland’. One has to remind oneself constantly that the modern states of Europe had not been invented, and that the communities which preceded them were no more artificial than very many of the states of European history. The ‘Upper Burgundians’ practised linguistic solidarity, never spreading beyond the bounds of their old tribal foes, the German-speaking Alemanni. They were characterized by the obstinacy of highlanders, instinctively distrustful of outsiders, and they shared the memories and myths of a common past that were already half a millennium old. In the opinion of some, they were able to preserve the free spirit of old Burgundy more effectively than was possible in the French-ruled duchy or in districts more subject to external influences. As a Swiss historian has put it, ‘
C’est ainsi que nacquit une improbable patrie entre un marteau et une éclume
’ (‘It was thus, between a hammer and an anvil, that an improbable homeland was born’).
⁶⁰
The clear implication is that Switzerland grew from its Burgundian roots.

Few specialists would demur from the view, however, that tenth-century Upper Burgundy was located in ‘one of the most obscure periods of mediaeval history’.
*
Rudolf II (d. 937), the only son of the kingdom’s founder, put his birthright at risk by intervening in the dangerous stakes of north Italian politics. Crowned king of the Lombards in 923, he commuted for a time between St Maurice and Pavia. The Italian nobles duly turned against him, inviting Hugh of Arles, regent of Lower Burgundy, to replace him. In 933 Rudolf and Hugh then worked out an ingenious solution. Rudolf agreed to recognize Hugh’s claims in Italy, while Hugh proposed Rudolf as monarch of a joint kingdom of the Upper and Lower Burgundies. Rudolf’s daughter married Hugh’s son, and four years later the happy couple came into possession of their merged realms. This cardinal event, however, is surrounded with potential confusion as the kings of Upper Burgundy are variously referred to as Rudolf, Rudolphus, Ralf or Raoul. It is also odd (except for people wedded to English practice) to see that their regnal numbering continues without a break after the creation of a new kingdom. For dynastic reasons, the first Rudolph to reign over the Kingdom of the Two Burgundies is generally counted as Rudolf II, which implies that he had merely benefited from a takeover of the south, not from the creation of a new realm.
⁶¹

The main source of confusion, though, derives from complacency about the political context of the treaty of 933. All the Burgundy-based commentaries present it as a simple bargain between two rulers. Yet developments in northern Italy were always followed closely in Germany, where the comings and goings of Rudolph and Hugh could not fail to arouse the suspicions of the Saxon Ottonian dynasty. When the two Burgundian rulers formed a close political and matrimonial alliance, their imperial German neighbours could not leave them undisturbed:

Against the threat involved in this alliance [Emperor] Otto I’s reaction was immediate. Intervening as the protector of Rudolf’s fifteen year old son, Conrad, Otto invaded Burgundy, ‘received king and kingdom into his possession’, and thus countered the threat of a union of Italy and the Burgundian lands… Although it was not until 1034 that Burgundy was finally united with Germany, German control was assured from 938.
⁶²

The German factor provided the key element in the Burgundian amalgamation. The Rudolphine dynasty was allowed to carry on, and the merger of the two Burgundian kingdoms went ahead. Yet the emperor always held the whip hand. Whenever the time was right, he or his successors could overturn the arrangement and reorder Burgundian affairs to their own advantage.

In the tenth century the future shape of Europe was slowly becoming visible. In the West, the long
Reconquista
against the Muslims was starting to turn Iberia into a peninsula of Christian states. The first ever kings of all-England mounted the throne (see p.
72
, above) Under Hugues Capet (r. 987–96) and his successors, West Francia was slowly being rebranded as France;
*
and the three Ottonian rulers of Saxony were launching the state which in due course would become the Holy Roman Empire. As memories of the Franks faded, the old names like West Francia or Neustria, and East Francia or Austrasia, disappeared in favour of France and Germany. In Italy, the Roman pope had gained political as well as a spiritual authority. In the East, as Byzantine power and Orthodox influence receded, new states emerged. After the arrival of the Magyars in 895, centuries of deep barbarian penetration into Europe finally drew to a close. Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary and Rus’, like France, England and Germany, were new polities. Despite its many transformations, Burgundy was already very old.

Despite the arbitrary manner of its creation, the Kingdom of the Two Burgundies, otherwise known from its capital as the ‘Kingdom of Arles’ – ‘
Le Royaume des Deux Bourgognes
’, or in German ‘
Das Königreich Arelat
’ – was far from being an artificial entity. It formed a natural geographical unit, made from the Rhône valley and all its tributaries from the glaciers to the sea. It was firmly based on historic Burgundia, and possessed a common post-Latin culture. In the north, via the ancient pathway of the ‘Burgundian Gate’ (now the Belfort Gap), it enjoyed a convenient link with the Rhineland; and in the south, via the ports of Arles and Marseille, it was in close touch with both Italy and Iberia. Geopolitically, it lay somewhat in the lee of the tempests that were about to embroil neighbouring states. The wind blew fair for a prosperous historical voyage. This was the sixth Burgundian kingdom, James Bryce’s No. V.

During the first century of its existence, the kingdom avoided the dynastic crises which blighted many similar states. The two successors of Rudolf II, Conrad (r. 937–93) and Rudolf III (r. 993–1032), both lived very long lives. Conradus Pacificus (‘Konrad der Friedfertiger’) earned a sobriquet which in the medieval context, when kings were by definition warlords, was mildly pejorative and possibly unjust. The modern translation is usually ‘the Peaceful’, but it may better be rendered, if not as ‘the Gutless’, then at least as ‘the Unwarlike’. Not that Conrad shunned war completely. In 954 his kingdom was invaded simultaneously by a Magyar raiding party and by Saracens. He sent envoys to the Magyars inviting them to repel the Saracens, and other envoys to the Saracens imploring them to fight the Magyars. He then sat back, and waited until his two enemies were cutting each other to pieces, before ordering the Burgundian host to clear the field. In the following decade he led expeditions against the Saracen settlements in Provence. So he may best be characterized as a king familiar with guile as well as gore. Surviving on the throne for fifty-six years was no mean feat in itself.