Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations (23 page)

Conrad’s realm is well attested both by coinage and by ecclesiastical charters. A bronze denier bearing the inscription
CONRADUS
around a central cross, was minted in Lugdunum. The abbey of Montmajour at Frigolet near Avignon was founded by him in 960, and, before 993,
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the abbey of Darentasia (Tarentaise in Savoy), whose modern name of Moûtiers is just a corrupted form of
monasterium.
In politics, despite Conrad’s marriage to a princess from West Francia, the reign was most clearly marked by the hostility of the Hugonids, who were minded to renege on the agreement of 933, and by continuing German tutelage. Conrad had been a ward at the imperial court, and his sister Adelheid (r. 931–9) became Otto the Great’s second empress. A generous benefactress, she was raised to sainthood as St Adelaide. She also played a key role as dowager-regent during the minority of her son. Conrad’s later years unfolded in the shadow of the coming Millennium, when the end of the world was forecast. ‘The tenth century was the iron age of the world; things had gone to the worst, and now was to be the judgment and completion.’
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Plagues and famine foretold the cataclysm that never happened. Some scholars present a different impression. ‘The gay smiling climate of the South… called forth the earliest fruits of chivalry and its attendant song,’ wrote one gushing nineteenth-century enthusiast. ‘During the greater part of the 10th century, while Northern France was a prey to intestine commotions, Provence and the non-French parts of historic Burgundy enjoyed repose under the mild rule of Conrad the Pacific.’
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Conrad’s son, Rudolf III, was equally dependent on German support. When the nobility rebelled, he was saved by a German force sent on the orders of the Dowager Adelheid, for the Kingdom of the Two Burgundies lacked any semblance of strong central government. The king at Arles was far removed from most of the inland regions that he hoped to control. Counts, bishops and cities asserted their sway over their localities. At the same time, decentralization had its advantages. The body politic could not be killed by a simple blow to the centre; it could only be dismantled slowly, piece by piece. Such was the fate of the ‘Arelate’. It held together in ramshackle fashion long after some of its most vital members had fallen off.

To do it justice, therefore, historians would have to tell all the histories of all the petty rulers and statelets which took root alongside regal authority. In Upper Burgundy, for example, the bishop of Geneva took control of not only the city but much of the adjoining lake area too. In consequence, the
Comitatus
, or secular count of the Genevois, set himself up in neighbouring Eneci (Annecy), where a line of twenty-one counts ruled from the tenth century to the end of the fourteenth. Similar things happened in Lyon. The bishops of Lyon, who claimed to be primates of Gaul, had been elevated to the rank of archbishop in Frankish times and were already in firm control of the city when the Kingdom of Arles appeared. As a result, the count of the Lyonnais moved out to the neighbouring district of Forez, where, from the stronghold of Montbrison, he could orchestrate an endless duel with the archbishops.

In the northern reaches of Upper Burgundy, the ‘counts-palatine of Burgundy’ enjoyed special privileges in return for holding the frontier zone against the Germans of Alsace and Swabia. Their stronghold stood at Vesontio (Besançon), where Otte-Guillaume/Otto-Wilhelm of Burgundy (986–1026) founded a line of thirty-six counts that survived to the seventeenth century. In the Viennois, the counts of Albon founded a base from which Guigues d’Albon (d. 1030) created a small empire stretching all the way to the Mont Cenis. One of his descendants was to adopt a dolphin as his heraldic emblem. His successors became known as
delfini
and their domain as the Delfinat or Dauphiné.

In Lower Burgundy, a string of near-independent counties came into existence in the Rhône valley, in the Valentinois, at Orange and in the Comtat Venaissin. But the greatest power was garnered by the heirs of Count Boso. Of the three lines of Bosonids, one came to an end with Hugh of Arles (see above); a second spawned the ‘counts of Provence’ based at Ais (Aix-en-Provence); the third founded the mountainous
County of Fourcalquier. The ascendancy of the counts of Provence in the southern parts of the kingdom was near complete but for the rumbustious lords of Baou (Les Baux), whose impregnable fortress and indomitable will defied all comers.

Thanks to the splintering of power, the Arelate declined, and Arles sank into a capital city in name only. No coronations were held there between the tenth and the twelfth century. The magnificent Roman amphitheatre was turned into a castle, and a miserable clutch of dwellings was built for safety inside the arena. The regal church of St Trophine stood outside, waiting for better times. In such conditions, Rudolf III struggled on under ever-growing restrictions. The chroniclers gave him the label of ‘
der Faule
’ or ‘
le Fainéant
’ and ‘the Pious’, which together make for a ‘holy loafer’. He was particularly disturbed by the depredations of the counts-palatine from the north, against whom he called in Heinrich (Henry) II, king of the Germans. Heinrich’s price – like that of Duke William of Normandy in this same era – was to extract a promise to appoint him sole heir apparent. Rudolf was childless, and the succession was likely to be claimed by his cousin, Odo II of Champagne, one of the most terrifying warriors of a terrifying age. In the event, Heinrich (r. 1014–24) died before Rudolf did. But the promise was not forgotten.

The matter came to a head in 1032. As expected, Rudolf died without issue. As expected, the throne of the Two Burgundies was immediately disputed both by Odo of Champagne and by Heinrich’s son, the Emperor Conrad II. The emperor won, because Odo’s claim was denounced by his feudal superior, the king of France. So a measure of international recognition was granted as the ‘realm of Two Burgundies’ passed painlessly into the possession of the German emperors. It would stay there, in theory at least, until the very last fragment fell to the French over six centuries later.

The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, as it came to be called, was not a simple organism. In its later stages, it was said to contain as many princely states as there were days in the year. But after 1032, its basic threefold structure consisted of the Kingdom of Germany (
Regnum Teutonicum
), the Kingdom of Italy (
Regnum Italiae
) and the Kingdom of Burgundy (
Regnum Burgundiae
), that is the ‘Kingdom of Arles’ as renamed after incorporation, and commonly known in German as the
Königreich von Burgund
. Now, therefore, only two Burgundies were functioning: the dependent duchy within France and the dependent kingdom within the Empire. Should the latter be counted as a new entity or not? Bryce thought not, and treats it as a simple continuation of the Kingdom of Arles. Yet the contrary arguments are persuasive. The political context had changed radically, and the territorial base would change, too. Within a century of 1032, imperial Burgundy would experience further transformations. It is counted here as the seventh kingdom.

For the next three hundred years – a huge span of time – the imperial kingdom continued to operate as best it could. With the sole exception of Frederick Barbarossa (r. 1152–90), the distant emperors rarely took a close interest from their various residences in Germany. The essence of the kingdom’s politics lay with the localities – in the ongoing feuds of the counts and the cities, on the fate of obscure battles, on the plotting of dynasts. Even so, few would have predicted that France’s modest duchy might one day grow more powerful than the Empire’s enormous kingdom.

The linguistic patterns which developed within the imperial kingdom are instructive. Despite German overlordship, the German language made few inroads. The main vernacular remained a Franco-Provençal idiom, the ancestor of modern Arpitan, which one can hear to this day in the streets of Lyon and in parts of western Switzerland and Savoy. To anyone with a historical ear, Arpitan carries the echoes of bygone Burgundy.
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The mechanism whereby imperial counts were promoted to dukedoms by the emperor seems to have been entirely haphazard. Everything depended on the power, prestige and good fortune of particular vassals at particular moments. Yet one new duchy, closely entwined with the noble German House of Zähringen, holds a special place in the story. The castle of Zähringen now lies in ruins on a hillside overlooking the town of Freiburg-im-Breisgau, but in the eleventh and twelfth centuries it was the seat of an ambitious clan of local counts, who had already won and lost two duchies, and who were now heading for the ducal ranks for a third time. The Zähringer had proved themselves efficient managers of their estates; they had exploited their legal rights over Church lands in the Black Forest, and, after founding the municipality of Freiburg, pioneered a system of consolidated local administration. They were demonstrating in miniature what the emperor longed to introduce on a larger scale. Too many Burgundian nobles had forgotten their oaths of fealty. In 1127, therefore, the emperor appointed Conrad von Zähringen
Rector
or ‘governor’ of the Kingdom of Burgundy, rewarding him further with the lands of a newly invented Duchy of
Burgundia Minor
or ‘Lesser Burgundy’. The Zähringen rectors were effectively brought in to restore discipline.
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The Duchy of
Burgundia Minor
, known in German as
Klein Burgund
, covered a sizeable area to the east of the Jura, coinciding quite closely with the limits of modern Francophone Switzerland. It is No. VI on Bryce’s list. It contained a smaller unit within it classed as a
Landgrafschaft
or ‘Landgravate’, which also received the appellation of ‘Burgundy’ and which is No. VIII on Bryce’s list. This unit consisted of the district on either side of the River Aar between Thun and Solothurn. It may or may not have reached as far as the Habichtsburg or Habsburg, the ‘Hawk’s Castle’, which overlooks the River Aar below Solothurn, and which was to be the original seat of Central Europe’s most powerful dynasty. Habsburg tradition insists that the protoplast of the family was called Guntram.
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As rectors and dukes, the Zähringer exercised overlordship over a large variety of nobles, counts and bishops, and over an archipelago of islands of loyal towns in the midst of a wayward countryside. They showed great energy establishing a network of incorporated towns, including Fribourg, Burgdorf, Murten (Morat), Rheinfelden and Thun. Their most active representative, Count Berthold V (
fl.
1180–1218), built the castle of Thun, and in 1191, reportedly after killing a bear, founded the city of Berne. When he died heirless, the duchy lapsed. The experiment was not repeated.
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Already in the mid-twelfth century Frederick Barbarossa was well aware of the need to shore up imperial power. He was crowned king of Germany at Aachen in 1152, king of Italy at Pavia in 1154, Holy Roman Emperor in 1155 and, after considerable delay, king of Burgundy at Arles in 1173. Each of these steps was preceded by years of politicking and campaigning. In the process he made common cause with the Roman papacy, thereby giving new life to the doctrine of ‘the Two Swords’, whereby emperor and pope were supposed to be the dual agents, secular and ecclesiastical, of divine rule. Barbarossa’s keen interest in Burgundy was kindled by his second marriage, to Beatrice, heiress of the count-palatine. Thanks to this union, he took the county under his direct rule, embroiled himself in the kingdom’s quarrels, and here at least achieved nothing decisive. He died on his way to the Second Crusade without ever seeing the Holy Land.
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