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sábado, 19 demaio de 2012 10:29 CHAPTER 4 THE FRANKISH KINGDOMS, 814-898: THE WEST Janet L. Nelson rHE problem of the succession was always paramount and often painful for an ageing medieval ruler.! Charlemagne wept over the deaths of his two elder sons? By 813 he had only one legitimate son left: Louis, king of Aquitaine since 781. Charlemagne summoned Louis north to a large assembly at Aachen, and “asked everyone, from the greatest to the least, ifit pleased them that he should hand over his imperial dignity to his son Louis, and they all replied enthusiastically that it was God's choice.” The following Sunday in the chapel at Aachen Charlemagne gave his son some fatherly precepts: Love God; govern and defend God's churches from wicked men; be merciful to your sisters, and to your younger brothers, and to your nephews and nieces and all your relatives; appoint loyal and Godfearing servants who will not take bribes; do not throw anyone out of his honor without good grounds for the decision? Was Louis willing to follow these precepts? Yes. Then, and only then, did Charlemagne tell his son to take the crown from the altar and place it on his own head “as a reminder of all that his father had commanded”. Charlemagne foresaw three potential areas of conflict: churches would be assailed by wicked men; there would be dispute within the royal family; and honores might be wrongly given or unfairly withdrawn. Charlemagne himself had built his regime on the collaboration of churches well endowed from the forfeited resources of the Carolingians” rivals; he had given his sons sub-kingdoms to rule, and put the threads of patronage at court in the capable hands of his unmarried daughters; he had granted honores to a cadre of loyal servants, of whom the next best things to a list are the witnesses of his will in 811: six archbishops, including those of Cologne, Mainz, Rheims and Lyons; Ave bishops, including Theodulf of Orléans; the four abbots of + Schiffer (1990). 2 Einhard, Vita Karol, e. 19. 3 Thegan, c. 6, pp. sgi-a. Cambridge Histories Online O Cambridge University Press, 2008 Página 1 de Anotações Não Arquivadas The Frankish kingdoms, 814-898: the West ul St Martin, Tours, Lorsch, in the Rhineland, St Riquier near Amiens and St Germain-des-Prés, Paris; and fifteen counts, headed by Wala, Charle- magne's cousin.º On all three criteria he set his son — church patronage, family management and the distribution of high office - Charlemagne seemed to have excelled. But an old regime's solutions can pose problems for its sucessor. In 814 Louis the Pious inherited an empire that was nominally a unit. The reality was à conglomeration of regra — regions, formerly independent kingdoms, and sub-kingdoms created for Charlemagne's sons (the same word served for whole and part) all of which had a great deal of autonomy In the west, that is, the lands that lay westwards of the river Meuse and the Alpine massif, there were other regras Provence, Septimania and Burgundy é which bordered the heartlands of Francia; Brittany; the western part of Francia — that is, the area between the Loire and the Charbonniêre forest; and Aquitaine, where Louis had been born,? and had mostly lived since the age of three. Louis clearly planned to continue his father's system of familial devolution: immediately after his accession he sent his own second son Pippin, then aged fourteen, to rule Aquitaine and his eldest son Lothar to Bavaria.º Italy was not Louis” to bestow. It had been ruled since 781 by Charlemagne's son Pippin, who died in 810. In 813, just as he established Louis as his imperial sucessor, Charlemagne confirmed the succession to Italy of Pippin's son Bernard — despite the fact that the young man had been born to a concubine, not a wife.? Churchmen were now insisting on legitimacy as a qualification for kingship. This meant upsetting hitherto reasonable expectations. It was a recipe for trouble. Louis firmly established his patriarchal position as head of the family and in the Frankish heartlands. Aachen would remain the sedes regni, where Louis usually wintered and often held assemblies. But Louis also looked further “west — where so much of the later politics of the reign were to focus. In 816, and again in the 8205, Compiêgne appeared on his itinerary as both residence and assembly site. Louis had a strong sense of continuity with the Frankish past, and with the Merovingians whose power base had lain in the Seine basin. In 816, he organised his own recoronation at Rheims as emperor, by Pope Stephen IV (816-17). At the same time his wife Irmengard was crowned empress: an echo of the papal consecration of the first Carolingian queen, Bertrada, in 754, and a declaration of intent to privilege Louis” own * Vita Raralicss 3 Sec Maps $ Compare sa. 778, p. so, trans. King, p. 79. 7 Astronomer, cc. 2 and 3, trans. King, pp. 167-8 3 ARE sa. Bis, po t4r, trans. King, p. 107. * Thegan, €. 22, p. 596; Werner (1990), p- 34. For the name Bernard, apparently associated wich illegitimate Carolingian birth, see p. 403 below. Cambridge Histories Online O Cambridge University Press, 2008 Página 2 de Anotações Não Arquivadas The Frankish kingdoms, 814-898: the West 23 Map 7 Divisio regnorum, 8o6 aristocrats depended on kings, or would-be kings, for the securing of their interests, including honores, and hence conflict within the royal family always became the focus of other rivalries in the regions and at court, Bernard's rebellion, though it originated in Italy, had repercussions in Rhaetia, and — at first sight improbably — in the Loire valley.!8 This is how it came about. Among those who had been prominent in the entourage of Charlemagne and for whom Louis' new regime had signalled an eclipse, was Bishop Theodulfof Orléans. Soon after 8 14, the countship of Orléans was given to Matfrid, a noble from the Rhineland and one of Louis” “new men'. At Orléans, ex offio, Matfrid inevitably began to impose his “potestas on neighbouring churches: the monasteries of St Aignan and St Benoit (Fleury), and, of course, the episcopal church of Orléans itself. Comital potestas meant demands for hospitality, for cash payments, for 2 Noble (1974); Borgolte (1986), p. 19. Cambridge Histories Online O Cambridge University Press, 2008 Página 4 de Anotações 14 JANET L. NELSON JP” saxony lI FRANÉIAI AUSTRA = INEUSTRIA BRITTANY, il CUM Lothor Louisthe German Pippin Iof Aquitaino Map 8 Ordinatio imperii, 817 troops, for lands to distribute to the count's nominees. Theodulf of Orléans, as a courtier out of favour, and as one whose local interests were threatened by Matfrid, was accused, perhaps rightly, of supporting Bernard of Italy. He was condemned by à secular, not an ecclesiastical court, and Alung into à monastic prison where he died soon after (tumour said, poisoned by those sho had benefited from his absence to plunder his goods). In Theodulfs fate, we can see how Charlemagne's three strands of government — ecclesiastical patronage, royal family-management and distribution of secular offices — were enmeshed in practice.!? Bernard stillhoped to negotiate terms with his uncle; he travelled north to meet him at Chalon. Louis had him scized, taken to Aachen, tried, condemned and blinded. Bernard died two days later. His supporters in Italy 'º Compare Dahlhaus-Berg (1975), pp. 16-21. Cambridge Histories Online O Cambridge University Press, 2008 116 JANET L. NELSON as a new Theodosius at the centre of it. Immediately after Attigny, Louis “sent Lothar to Italy” to claim it as ruler. He also arranged the marriage of Pippin of Aquitaine to the daughter of a Frankish magnate, and despatched the newly-weds back “to the west. Itwas in the west, in the largest sense, that Louis, though he resided in the 8205 most frequently in the lands between Meuse and Rhine, repeatedly showed his concern to remain in overall control: in western Francia, where in 829 he summoned an assembly to Patis to elaborate a great programme of reform; in Neustria, where he gave his archchancellor Theoto the abbacy of St Martin, Tours; in Brittany where he personally led a successful campaign in 824; in Aquitaine, where as former ruler he could stil pull strings and still, despite his son Pippin's kingship there, intervene to banish the poet Ermold from Pippin's entourage;'! on the Spanish March, where he had won his sputs as a youth, and which could lure him still further west. In 826 an outbreak of rebellion against the Muslim regime in Córdoba inspired Louis to write to the people of Mérida encouraging them to rebel and promising to co-ordinate with them the move westwards of a Frankish army. Only hindsight persuades us to dismiss this as fantasy: in the 8205, Córdoba's star seemed to wane, while Louis” waxed. And only hindsight makes us see the Pyrenees as a barrier between discrete political units. Contemporary perceptions of real prospects for Frankish expansion, plunder and tribute here help to explain the bitterness of Louis” disappointment when in 827 à Frankish army led by Counts Hugh and Matfrid, with orders to collaborate with Pippin of Aquitaine and Count Bernard of Barcelona against the “Saracens”, arrived 'too late, owing to the negligence of its leaders” 3 Hugh (thereafter nicknamed “the fearful”) and Matfrid lost their Neustrian honores because of this failure, They also lost their positions of influence at court. Their chief supplanters were Bernard, who became chamberlain (that is, in charge of the imperial treasure) in 828, and Bernard's kinsman Odo, the new count of Orléans. Thus the roots of the crisis of Louis” reign lay in the west: where Louis himself had most to give and most to lose; where the interests of Louis and his sons most clearly collided — Lothar hankering after Neustria, Pippin resentful of his father interference in Aquitaine; where rivalries between “8 Werner (1990), p. 58. Compare de Jong (1993). = ARF (2) xa 822, p. 159, tras. Schole p. tt. 30 Jewas perhaps there, at the Aachen assembly of August 825, that Louis issued his great Ordinatio: Guilor (1990), p. 461 see further, p. 426 below. 3 Ermold, la Honorem tv, 1. 26:8-49, ed. Fatal, p. 200, Epitola 1, 1. 201-4, p. 253; see Godman (1987), pp: 106-11. “2 MGH Epp. v, 1, Pp. 15-16. 33 ARF (2) xa. 827, p. 173 (ducum devido), trans. p. 121. CÊ. Thegam, € 28, p. 597. Cambridge Histories Online O Cambridge University Press, 2008 Página 7 de Anotações Não Arquivadas The Frankish kingdom, 814-898: the West “7 Carolingians would coincide with the fissures of factional conflict between magnates; and where in 850 Hugh and Matfrid sought revenge through rebellion against Louis. Hugh and Matfrid began the revolt, and then — because only a Carolingian leader could make rebellion viable — called in Pippin, angered and shamed by his father's intervention in the government of Aquitaine.* Lothar's involvement was only slightly less predictable. The Empress Judith had given birth in 823 to a boy-child, Charles — the future Charles the Bald; the baby's parents had foreseen and tried to forestall trouble by enrolling Lothar as Charles* godfather and special protector. In creating a regnum for Charles in 829, Louis had offended Lothar, granting not only Alemannia but Alsace and Chur and part of Burgundy — lands Lothar expected and which formed a strategic corridor between Francia and Italy Most ofall, Lothar, who had been “sent to Italy”, resented his exclusion from Francia, and from his father”s court where Judith and Bernard were in the ascendant — and their rivals responded with rumours of adultery and witeherafr.37 “The rebels” vengeance was sharp: they blinded Bernard?s brother (Ber- nard himself escaped), and imprisoned Judith in an Aquitainian convent, her two brothers in Aquitainian monasteries.'8 But when Louis stood firm, and when his son Louis of Bavaria stood by him, the ebels were reconciled. Bernard lost his court office, and never regained Louis” confidence. Itturned out, however, that 850 had been only a dress rehearsal. Pippin's reconcilia- tion was unreal. He insulted his father in 831 by failing to attend an assembly when summoned; at Christmas-time when he appeared at Aachen his father vithheld the usual rituals of welcome, and Pippin stormed back to Aquitaine where he found a natural supporter in Bernard.º Louis deprived Pippin of his realm of Aquitaine and gave it instead to Charles. There, Louis hoped he could count on long-standing personal loyalties. Unfortunately for Louis, Pippin and his brothers joined forces, and outbid him in Francia: at a place in Alsace which soon became known as the Field of Lies, Louis was deserted by enough supporters to make resistance impossible. Lothar had brought Pope Gregory IV from Italy to stiffen fainthearts.O He now deposed his father from his imperial office in an episcopally staged ritual (with Archbishop Ebbo of Rheims playing the leading role), and assumed sole power himself. Louis, held in rough conditions at Aachen, showed true grit, refusing to accept monastic retirement. Soon many people had second thoughts. The crucial defection from the rebel alliance was Pippin's. An Aquitainian army advanced » AB(3) sa.8yo,p.zr 3 Nithard, 1,350, 1 de AX sa. 829, p. 7. Compare Boshof (1990), p. 185. See Map 8. 3 Astronomer,c. 44 » AB(3) sa.8so, paz » Astronomer,c.47. “0 Fried (1950), pp. 266-70. Cambridge Histories Online O Cambridge University Press, 2008 Página 8 de Anotações Não Arquivadas The Frankish kingdoms, 814-898: the West 119 Aquitaine acknowledged Pippin's son and namesake as their king (there was no argument over his legitimacy). The last year or so of Louis” reign was spent trying to enforce his decision against Pippin II; and when Louis was deflected to the Rhineland to quell another rebellion by his namesake, Louis the German, Charles, helped by his mother Judith, took up the struggle on his own behalf. His forces had made a good deal of headway — though Pippin II remained at large — when on 26 June 840 came news of the emperor's death. How far had Louis' regime, and in the longer run Frankish monarchy in general, been weakened by the events of 8352 Louis” deposition was widely noticed by ecclesiastical chroniclers throughout the empire; and the absence of any capitularies for the years 834-40 has been taken to show loss of imperial authority.* On the other hand Louis" prestige remained high in the eyes of neighbours and foreigners (Slavs, Danes, Byzantines); and numisma- tic evidence shows that he recovered control of minting throughout the empire, and that coinage high in quality and quantity was produced in the latter years of the reign, as earlier. If the upheavals of 83 3-4 had attracted the attentions of Northmen, hence the annual raids on Dorestad in 834-7, Louis met the challenge reactively, with improved defences, and proacti- vely, by making allies among the Danes. Louis scored well on his father's three criteria. He protested vigorously against spoliations of church property in (characteristically) his sons” regra of Italy and in Aquitaine, He distributed honores skilfully, withholding from former rebels, and granting to men he could trust, often his own kinsmen. He imposed his willin the key area of family politics: disinheriting his grandsons in Charles” favour; ruthlessly suppressing Louis the German when he rebelled in response to his father's increased pressure on East Frankish resources (a shift castwards necessitated by Charles promotion in the West); and, most vital of all, keeping Lothar in Italy, except when summoned north in 839 to agree à prospective two-way division of the entire empire (except for Bavaria) with Charles. The West, where the conflicts of 833-4 had been fiercest fought, was where Louis intended Charles to have his inheritance: by the terms of 839 Charles was to get, on his father's death, the heartlands westwards from the Meuse valley, plus Neustria and Aquitaine (including Septimania), Burgundy and Provence. “The best-laid schemes of mice — and men — gang aft agley.” Louis” death abruptly reopened the whole question of the empire's future. Lothar, throwing aside the 859 agreement, came north to reassert his claims to the whole of the Frankish heartlands, on the 817 model? To ofset the “ Forcefully cestating this view: Depreuz (1992). For an alternative view, see Nelson (1990) “* Coupland (1990). + AB(3) sa. 840, p. 36: Lothar breaks the sra natura Cambridge Histories Online O Cambridge University Press, 2008 Página 10 de Anotações Não Arquivada 120 JANET L. NELSON inevitable hostility of his two brothers, Louis the German and Charles, he sought an ally: Pippin IL. Thus on 25 June 841, at Fontenoy in Burgundy, Carolingian rivals were pitted two against two. Even after Charles and Louis won the battle, peace was a long time coming. Like all civil conflicts, this one exposed especially clearly, and cruelly, the latent internal strains of the society it tore apart. Contemporaries struggled to make sense of painful experiences. It is not coincidental that the years 840-; are the best documented of any in the early middle ages.s Nithard, a participant- observer and himself an illegitimate Carolingian, wrote the fullest record. He had joined Charles” camp in 840 — and probably stayed there because Lothar promptly took away his honores.s! Despite this personal stake and a personal military role, Nithard says much less about the battle than about efforts to avert it, and about post-bellum reconciliation. Only after Charles and Louis the German had sworn to remain united against Lothar, and their men had sworn to hold them to it — these were the famous Strasbourg Oaths of February 842 — did Lothar open negotiations. Nithard exposes the mechanics of Carolingian diplomacy: the choosing of teams of noble negotiators by each king, and the play of two intersecting factors affecting kings and nobles alike: affinity, that is, ties and obligations of kinship and clientship, and congruence, that is, a sense of what was fair and fitting.? Nithard saw himself as a good example of the way affinity and congruence should have wosked. He had attached his fortunes to Adalhard, the dominant figure in Charles entourage, and at Fontenoy Nithard (as he himself stresses) had given crucial help to Adalhard.º In December 842 Charles chose as his bride Ermentrude, Adalhard's niece: Charles married her, according to Nithard, so that Adalhard could bring over the “majority of the plebs 54 Nithard is identifying here, as in bis account of the Strasbourg Oaths, a distinct class of lesser aristocrats dependent on, but also themselves making claims on, magnates. Nithard too, though himself of Charles” inner circle and Charles” cousin, still depended on Adalhard, and by this time was thoroughly disenchanted, since Adalhard, as Charles” envoy in June 842, had negotiated away to Lothar the area west of the Meuse where, it seems, Nithard's bonores lay. Nithard's portrayal rings true: when kings fought, self- interested aristocrats were seldom certain of how to pursue their interests successfully; sometimes treacherous, they believed that noble conduct meant loyalty unto death; violent but vulnerable, in the end they anxiously prodded their lords towards a peace settlement. They got there after a year's diplomacy — and many months” laborious assessing by noble missi of royal resources — for it was from those (as Lothar frankly put it) that kings got “the * Nelson (1999) S Nelson (1986), ppaza-s. 3º Nithardiv. 1. & Nitharducto * Nithardiv.6. Cambridge Histories Online O Cambridge University Press, 2008 Página 11 de Anotações Não Arquivada Linguisticfrontier between Romance! and Germani” West Frankish kingdom IChartes the Batd) Middle Kingdom (Lotharingia and the kingdom of Italy) (Lothar) UZZZA East Frankish kingdom lLouisthe German) Map 9 Partition of 843 (Treaty of Verdun) Cambridge Histories Online O Cambridge University Press, 2008 Página 13 de Anotações Não Arquivadas g É E | LM E ES N of 870 (Treaty of Meersen) 10 Partition Map Press, 2008 Cambridge University Online O Cambridge Histories. Página 14 de Anotações Não Arquivadas The Frankish kingdoms, 814-898: the West 125 none more richly than his third son Carloman, who amassed several of the prime abbacies in Francia. New problems arose in the early 8605 when the two elder sons rebelled. Each was supported by aristocrats in his own regnum, and the aim, apparently, was greater autonomy. Even though Charles” sons were nominally kings in their own regra, Charles kept them on a short tein, denying them the right to issue coins or grant charters, as the sons of Louis the Pious had done in their regna, and thus inhibiting their construction of aristocratic 'constituencies' of their own. Charles was in fact returning to the patriarchal style of Charlemagne. He crushed the rebellions; he humiliated his sons as Charlemagne had humiliated Pippin the Hunch- back. Charles of Aquitaine died in 866. In 867 Louis, nicknamed the Stammerer, was sent to Aquitaine as king with houschold officers chosen by Charles from his own palace.º! By then Louis” mother had been formally consecrated queen in a ritual that explicitly requested more, and better, offspring.2 Now there were prospects of acquiring new regna through redistribution vwithin the larger Carolingian regnum. Lothar's son Louis II of Italy had no son of his own. Lothar IP's wife Theutberga was childless while his only son «vas by a woman whom many refused to acknowledge as his wife (the boy's name, Hugh, was indeed commonly chosen for Carolingian bastards). The refusers included Lothar's uncles Louis the German and Charles the Bald. Lothar used every argument to justify divorcing Theutberga and marrying Hugh's mother: in vain. He died, still undivorced, in 869, just when, coincidentally, Louis the German lay desperately ill. Charles made a grab for Lothar's kingdom: he was consecrated in September at Metz, and celebrated Christmas 869 at Aachen. But Louis recovered and pressed counter-claims. In 870 Lothar's uncles divided his kingdom between them (Map 10).ºº Charles failed to hold Aachen or Metz; and even his acquisitions proved a mixed blessing, since they provoked Carloman to rebel, in pursuit of a kingdom of his own. For Charles this filial rebellion was uniquely dangerous: its location, and goal, lay in Francia, with key royal resources at stake, and the aristocrats who supported Carloman were drawn from Charles' own heartlands; further, it confirmed what Pippin I['s carcer had already intimated, that tonsuring was not an infallible strategy for excluding surplus members of the royal family; worse still, Louis the German once more threatened to intervene. This combination of threats explains why Charles put down Carloman's rebellion with particular ferocity, and had his “o Compare p.szo below. AB(3)p.138 “2 Ordo of 866; MGH Cap. 11, no. 301, pp. 4533: AB (3), pp. 133-4 “AB (5), pp. 15862. Ar Meccsen: AB (3), pp. 168-9; MGH Cap. 1, no. as1, pp. 199-4 Cambridge Histories Online O Cambridge University Press, 2008 Página 16 de Anotações Não Arquivada 126 JANET L. NELSON own son blinded.s At the same time he retaliated by supporting Louis' sons in rebellion against their father. Carolingian family politics might have evoked from a Victorian marron the same reaction as a performance of “Antony and Cleopatra: How very different from the homelife of our own dear queen! After 873 Charles had only one son left: Louis the Stammerer. But Charles continued to hope for more. Ermentrude bad died, coincidentally, in 869, and Charles was able to choose a second bride, with what some saw as indecent haste, who could bring him the support of her kin (they included heraunt Theutberga) in Lothar's kingdom. From now on Charles hoped for further progeny — and threatened Louis the Stammerer with disinheritance. In the case of the Stammerer's own sons there was more than a threat: Charles, imitating his father's treatment of his grandsons but with a slightly different strategy, forced the Stammerer to repudiate his wife: this opened the possibility of disinheriting his sons, Charles” grandsons. At the same time Charles made his son remarey a wife of Charles” choosing — again to win the short-term politicaladvantage of support from the bride's kin.º Charles was a ruthless paterfamilias. But there was no revolt from Louis, at least. Meanwhile Charles made the most of his own second wife's family as political supporters: notably his brother-in-law Boso who played a series of important roles, first in Charles” annexation of western Lotharingia in 869, when Boso used his local influence, second in Charles" acquisition of the Rhône valley and Provence in 870, where Boso was given the key position of dus: of Vienne, and third in reconstructing the government of Aquitaine in 872, when Charles appointed Boso chamberlain to Louis the Stammerer.º” In 875, Louis II of Italy died. Charles had long set his sights on the imperial title, and leaving Richildis and Louis the Stammerer to guard Francia, quickly made for Italy, where he was accepted by most of the aristocracy of the Italian regnum, and anointed and crowned emperor at Rome by the pope on Christmas Day 875. Meanwhile Louis the German and his son Louis the Younger raided Charles" kingdom, meeting no effectual resistance, It was not really an invasion, since there was no plan to take over — only to ravage and cause maximum aristocratic dissatisfaction: but Louis” real aim was “to make Charles leave Italy” where Louis hoped to install his own eldest son Karlmann. That hope was disappointed: Charles held on to Italy. But he did not spend long there. He arranged the marriage of Boso to Louis IT's daughter, and left him as viceroy in Lombardy;ºº then he himself went back to Francia to restore his regime, In August 876 Louis the German + Nelson (1988). “ Regino, 878, p. 4489 below, 77 (tecte 876), p. 113. See AB (3), pp. 189-90 nn. 3 and 5 ; Nelson (19924), p.a52. Cambridge Histories Online O Cambridge University Press, 2008 Página 17 de Anotações Não Arquivada 128 JANET L. NELSON his reign fought, and negotiated, to contain Danish expansion in the area now known as Schleswig-Holstein. In the 8205, Louis the Pious added a missionary strategy to his interventions in Danish dynastic disputes, welcoming the Danish prince Harald to Mainz and standing godfather to him at his baptism.?* In the 8305, Louis allied with the Danish king Horik, using him to exert control over other more unruly Danes. Louis" eventual solution to the problem of defending Dorestad was to hand it over to à Danish prince named Rorik (perhaps a member of a rival branch of the Danish royal family). Meanwhile (probably in 833-4) Lothar had allied with Harald on his own account, and he exploited this alliance again in 841 against his brothers. Charles too sought a Danish ally, Ragnar, and gave him land in Flanders, which he later withdrew when Ragnar “carned his wrath”. On one reading of the evidence, it was this Ragnar who attacked Paris in 845, and was bought off for 7000 pounds of silver, after having hanged 111 Frankish prisoners on the west bank of the Seine in a grisly display for the benefit of Charles and his men across the river.”5 That episode is by far the nastiest reported Scandinavian atrocity on the Continent. It shows the Northmen's violent face. But the Franks needed no lessons in violence; and they understood very well what the Northmen had come for - loot and/or a warriors wages. In the 80 Scandinavian attacks on the Loire and then the Seine became frequent: the flight of peasants soon caused disruption to normal services and local lords began to suffer. Scandinavian demands for payment were costly to both peasants and lords. Charles attempted to meet the challenge, with varied success. On the whole, the raids increased. Eventually, Charles found a twofold strategy: he targeted particular Scandinavian leaders and recruited them to his own service; and he constructed fortifications, especially on rivers.?s By the mid- 860s he had the situation on the Seine under control; and although Scandinavian remained on the Loire, they were contained in the area of Nantes. The regnum where their raids had been notably severe was Aqui- taine; and here it was only in the 8605 that Charles co-ordinated local efiorts and mounted efective resistance. Churches were the main victims — as they had long been of acquisitive local aristocrats. At Bordeaux, for instance, the episcopal sequence is broken from c.860 until the late tenth century. Ecclesiastical dislocation meant that written records were no longer maintained: hence virtually nothing is known of Bordeaux after 860 until the eleventh century. Tt would be unsafe to infer, though, that the place was ruined": what can be said is that ifany people prospered there, they were not 74 Angenendt (1984), pp. 21-23; Hauck (1990), pp. 289-94. 75 Nelson (19924), p. 151; for Ragnar see Vita Anskarii, cc. 21, 36, 38, Pp- 46, 71, 75: Compare Wood (1987). * Coupland (1987); Gillmor (1989). Cambridge Histories Online O Cambridge University Press, 2008 Página 19 de Anotações Não Arquivada The Frankish kingdoms, 814-898: the West 129 churchmen.” There isa little more information for Nantes, where Scandina- vian raids began in carnest in 843, and where Scandinavians are more or less continuously attested throughout the ninth century. In the late 8605, the bishop sought a transfer, as the archbishop of Bordeaux had already successfully done, on the grounds that the devastation of the Northmen had made life impossible. Another Frankish prelate opposed the move however (he was, admittedly, a personal enemy of the bishop of Nantes), asserting that plenty of Christian laypeople remained at Nantes, living alongside the Northmen, and that the bishop must stay with his flock.”s The bishop got his transfer: his move to the metropolitan see of Tours was approved by the pope, thanks to Charles” intervention. From the king's point of view, the Scandinavians' impact was serious. It depleted the royal treasury — not least when Charles bore the brunt of Ragnar's 7000 pounds in 845 — the largest single payment of the reign. There was damage to prestige when the king seemed unable to protect his own. Charles” anguish in 845 is perfectly credible - though he redeemed, eventually, his vow to protect St Denis.”? There were also severe problems of regional control, visible in diminishing royal interventions in Neustria (forty-six charter beneficiaries there in 840-59, only seventeen in 860-77). Yet Scandinavian activity was not unequivocally harméul to royal interests. 1a 859, when Danish attacks caused the peasantry between the Seine and the Loire to take up arms in self-protection, the local aristocrats (potentiores), fearing social disorder, slew the peasants.ºº Such attitudes tended to rally the aristocracy around the king as the unique source of legitimate force and bastion of social control. At the same time, the king wanted to harness peasant military effort in the defence against a common external enemy, and he acknowledged his own obligation to protect peasants from landlordly oppression: the Edict of Pitres was a symptom of those converging concerns precisely in the region of the lower Seine. Then, Scandinavian demands for tribute meant that Charles was able to impose generaliscd taxation in town and counteyside: a striking manifestation of royal authority. There was a broader impact on the economy too: it was not only cash that Northmen wanted, but Prankish food and horses and weapons, for which they were prepared to pay. The volume of transactions certainly rose in the Seine and Loire valleys especially and, as more coin was needed, debasement became widespread. In 864 Charles was able to undertake a realm-wide coinage reform, essentially a revaluation. Hoard evidence shows that it was effective, and that millions of silver coins circulated fairly rapidly within, 7 Fora different interpretation, see Wallace-Hadrill (1976), pp. 217-36. % Hinemar, Ep. 31, PL, 126, cols. 210-30, ata31, 225,2:8. 7? Nelson (19924), pp. 152, 219. “ Abra, p.89. Cambridge Histories Online O Cambridge University Press, 2008 Página 20 de Anota
