Skilled military leaders with sufficient means began restoring order over the prevailing political turmoil in what had been the territories of the collapsing Roman empire. The Carolingians used their power as mayors of the Franks to eventually elevate themselves to the monarchy. This dynasty arose to rule over what had been ancient Gaul and other Roman provinces in Francia and southern Germania, beginning from the middle of the fifth century. The Romans occupied Gaul for two centuries until about 260, when Germanic tribes began making incursions and settling there when Roman emperors neglected administering the provinces. Burgundians and Visigoths obtained settlements in the southern provinces of Gaul from the emperor Honorius in 414, while the Franks seized northern regions, and invaded Belgic Gaul, which they mostly occupied after over a century of fighting the Romans for its control. Gaul became divided into different states, consisting of Burgundians and Visigoths in the south, Franks in the northeast, an independent republic of Armorica in present day Brittany and a small region of Belgic Gaul that remained subject to Roman rule.
Odoacer maintained earlier Roman institutions completely intact in Italy with the support of the Roman senate by taking over the formerly Roman governmental apparatus, including its civil and administrative offices, which maintained stability in what became the Ostrogothic kingdom until there was another great emigration of the surplus barbarian populations again altered the situation in the West. The Ostrogoths remained in Italy along the Danube after the Visigoths had left and established a kingdom in Spain from 418 to 471, who then also shifted westward and southward into Italy. The ruling dynasty in Constantinople remained claiming to be the Roman Empire, where emperor Zeno dispatched Theodoric, the king of the Ostrogoths, to make this claim acknowledged in Italy. Theodoric the Great displaced Odoacer through waging warfare from 489, then and made himself the independent king of an Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy, Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, and part of the Balkan peninsula along the Danube River in 493, and renounced subjection to the eastern Roman empire. Theodoric became the king who was also considered the western Roman emperor with his seat of government in Ravenna, much as Valentinian had done, while Roman institutions in Italy continued functioning in the south, while Goths settled across the north in Theodoric’s kingdom, with the chiefs leading them to war and administering justice. Theodoric enlarged Ravenna, restored Rome, and built towns and fortresses between the extremity of the Adriatic and the Alps to obstruct any future incursions of barbarians into Italy.
As the western empire could not be maintained as a whole outside of this Ostrogothic kingdom, several great kingdoms would arise on the ruins of the collapsed western Roman provinces within the space of a hundred and sixty years. These included the Visigoths establishing their presence in Spain, and the Burgundians in Savoy. The Vandals in North Africa who crossed over into Spain in 409, and then into Africa in 429 where they founded an independent kingdom, including Carthage falling into their hands in 439, followed by Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and the Balearic Islands, sacked Rome in May 455, and maintained their presence until they were dispersed in 711 by Islamic Umayyad invaders. Meanwhile, the eastern Roman empire with its capital in Constantinople survived as the Byzantium empire until 1453 when it fell to the Ottoman Turks.
Several separate Germanic kingdoms were set up by 509. The Suevi established a presence in the northwestern Iberian Peninsula. Formerly Roman Gaul became divided in 480 between the Roman rump state of the kingdom of Soissons, Celtic Britons on the Brittany Peninsula who took refuge there from Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain, where inhabitants in the Scottish Highlands, Wales and Cornwall resisted Saxon rule, and Ireland remained occupied by Celtic clans. The Burgundians founded in a kingdom in Gaul and the western half of Helvetia. These tribes were followed by the Visigoths who then conquered southern Gaul, and later crossed into northern Spain and set the Ebro River the boundary between them and the Vandals. The Visigoths would continue expanding their influence on the Iberian Peninsula by displacing the Suevi and the Alans. The Burgundians established themselves in southern Gaul, while the Franks later established themselves throughout northern Gaul, and the Frisians settled in the northwestern part of the continent. Thuringians, Saxons, and Rugians remained settled in central Europe and the Angles in present day Denmark. The Ostrogoths under their king Theodoric established a kingdom in Italy and the northwestern region of the Balkan Peninsula, with its seat of government at Ravenna.
Justinian I, the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire from 527, intended to restore the former glory of Rome. Law in written form was instituted in the Justinian Code that established the absolute power of the emperor, from whom all justice was to emanate. A significant foreign policy was restoring historical boundaries. General Belisarius was dispatched to disperse the north African Vandals and seizing Carthage in 533 during the ongoing effort to recover the former territories of the western Roman empire that had hitherto collapsed. The whole of northern Africa, Corsica, Sardinia and the Balearic Islands were recovered to the control of the Eastern Roman Empire. Belisarius thus destroyed the Vandal kingdom by the spring of 534. This invasion was followed in 535 by a costly twenty-year intervention in the Ostrogoth kingdom, beginning with invading Sicily , and then Dalmatia and the Italian Peninsula in 536, culminating in Belisarius entering Rome in December, which would lead to retaking all of Italy in 539, thus extinguishing Gothic rule. Nevertheless, Rome was lost in 549 with the withdrawal of Belisarius. Although control over Rome shifted four times, the main Gothic army was crushed in 552.
Further incursions took place when parts of the Iberian Peninsula were later retaken from the Visigoths between 552 and 555, leading to the formation of the province of Spania before the debilitating effects of the bubonic plague in Constantinople that struck Byzantium thereafter that could have killed half of its population, which made intervention impossible to sustain. Following Justinian’s death in 565, Narses as the vice-regent of the empire in Ravenna summoned the Lombards to elevate his status. The Lombards then advanced from present-day western Hungary when they were threatened by Turkic Avars, and drove the Ostrogoths from the north, which resulted in establishing a firmer and more enduring presence in northern Italy from 568, including the duchy of Benevento, Spoleto, Capua and set their capital at Pavia. They later began overrunning present-day Switzerland from the Franks through victories against the Burgundians and the Alemanni in Gaul. They seized control of nearly all of northern Italy in 572, and later establishing the Lombard kingdom in Italy in 581, where they competed for influence with the territories of the papacy that assumed governmental control in Rome, and put an end to the Roman Senate in 603. While the Lombards maintained possession of northern Italy, the Byzantine empire, which remained identifying as the surviving Roman empire, maintained its holdings in the southern Italy. The Lombard settlement of Italy hereafter became the final movement of Germanic emigrations that had begun with the movement of the Goths from the Baltic to the Black Sea in 375.
The Merovingian king Clovis (Chlodwig) I of the Salian Frankish line of Meroveus, who became the king of the Franks in 481, and laid the basis for the kingdom of France. He forcibly expanded his dominions against both the last bastions of the Romans in western continental Europe and other Germanic tribes, to consolidate his power, while possessing all of northern Gaul and Belgium, with land stretching from the Rhine to the Atlantic, as Frankish territory, with the seat of government in Paris. He defeated the last Roman provincial governor of the central provinces of Gaul, Syagrius who had created an independent Roman state therein, near Soissons in 486, which extinguished the final western Roman rump state presence in Gaul, and established the Loire River as the southern boundary of the Frankish kingdom, bordering the territory of the Visigoths to the south. Unlike in Italy and other Germanic kingdoms, the division of newly won territory, public lands or those that had been left vacant as a result of the deaths of the former owners came into the possession of the Frankish monarchy, which were then distributed at their discretion. Churches also became great landowning entities, as many persons who deceased without heirs left their estates to them.
Clovis I was also the first of the Germanic kings to convert to Catholicism by being baptised by the archbishop of Rheims on 25 December 496, as opposed to the Arian sect founded by Arius that that papacy considered to be heretical, owing to the denial that Christ was distinct from God, and therefore were not of the same spiritual substance while denying the existence of the Holy Trinity. This event became the keystone of his political arch by acquiring the support of the Catholic church. Three thousand of his vassals followed his example, and consolidated removing the barrier blocking fusing the interests of Roman and Germanic subjects, which was necessary for the vitality of the new state. Church discipline also became increasingly lax, in terms of increasing less frequent synods and regulating the clergy. Bishops who had hitherto been elected by the clergy and local populations came to be appointed by the monarchy, and often became instruments of its will.
Clovis then subjugated other Germanic tribes in present day Germany, France, and the Low Countries in the interest of extending Catholicism. Waging war against them began with waging war against the Arian Visigoths in their remaining possessions in Gaul in the regions of Aries, Caracassone and Narbonne, composing Septimania, or Gothia. Warfare continued against the Alemanni living in present day southwestern Germany and eastern Switzerland at the Battle of Tobiac in 496, the Burgundians in 500, and the Visigoths in 507, and eventually drove them out of Gaul and acquired much of Aquitaine by 508, as well as the Celts of Armorica, which later became Brittany. The kingdom of Thuringia became absorbed into the kingdom of the Franks in 531 following their defeat at Sceudungen, and the kingdom of Burgundy in 534.
The Visigoths established a kingdom based in Toulouse, the Alemanni along the Main and Neckar rivers, and the Burgundians in southern Gaul. The subjugated tribes became his vassals, which were united in the Frankish kingdom, including the Gothic Salians and Ripuarians who lived in what is present day Holland and Belgium. The kingdom of Gaul’s boundaries was extended southward to the Loire River, and the battle of Voille near Tours against the Visigoth kingdom enabled Clovis to extend their dominions from Toulouse to Bordeaux, across the whole of Aquitaine, which was followed by subduing the Burgundians, and then the Visigoths under Alaric, and then eastward against the Alemanni into present day southwestern Germany, which established a united Gaul under Merovingian rule as the kingdom of Francia.
Clovis later divided his kingdom among his four sons in 512, which would lead to the creation of the separate kingdoms of Neustria, Austrasia, and Burgundy, and Acquitaine under the leadership of Merovingian kings, at a time when Europe was largely divided between the Byzantine empire, including its presence in most of present day Italy, outside the northern Italian territories held by the Lombards from 568 to 774, Alemanni and Bavari to the north of the Lombards, various Slavic tribes, such as the Avars who occupied Hungary, Czechs who had taken control of Bohemia, Moravians, Croats and Serbs in the east, Visigoths, Suevi, Basques and Byzantines in present day Spain, Thuringians and Saxons in present day northern Germany, Frisians in present day northern Belgium and Holland, and Anglo-Saxons in eastern England. Dividing Frankish lands among inheritors led to civil wars among them, as well as warring against neighbouring kingdoms. Clothar I re-unified the kingdom in 558 into the kingdom of Francia, which was composed of nearly all of the territory west of the Rhine, part of present-day western Switzerland, the Rhone valley to the Mediterranean, and the Pyranees to the south, bordering the kingdom of the Visigoths in the Iberian Peninsula. Fragmentation then took place during internecine warfare among his descendants, until Clothar II of Neustria re-united the Frankish kingdoms, and instituted the office of the mayor of the palace in 613 to help administer the kingdom, although this development would initiate the decline of the dynasty. They assumed political power in practice, effectively serving as prime ministers, under ineffective kings who became irrelevant in practice, while these mayors waged war against noble regional rulers who claimed power at the expense of a central monarchy, in exchange for military service. They would acquire territory that would come under the jurisdiction of the monarchy, and also granted their own landed estates known as a feod, which were in turn divided among their own vassals who received separate benefices in exchange for their services, which largely became hereditary, and thus led to the creation of a new Frankish aristocracy that greatly reduced monarchical authority by asserting their independence in frequent civil wars between Frankish aristocrats who became the actual rulers of the Frankish kingdoms.
Pepin of Héristal (Pippin of Heristall) became the East Frankish mayor of Neustria in 680. He invaded West Francia to achieve leadership of the entire Frankish kingdom, and utterly defeated the West Franks at the battle of Testry near St. Quentin in 687, which resulted in subduing the mayor of Austrasia, who was also administering the affairs of Burgundy. This settlement, in which Pepin declared himself duke and prince of the Franks, as well as the mayor of these three sovereignties restored the unity of the Franks and concentrated power into his hands while bringing some semblance of order in the Frankish kingdom by enforcing the Germanic dukes to pledge their allegiance to the central monarchy until his death in 714. One of his descendants, Charles Martel, who became the mayor of the palace in 718, significantly demonstrated his battle skills in fighting against the Neustrians at Cambray and Soissons, and then the Bavarians, Saxons, Alemanni until 730. Further pressure emanated from the Umayyad Caliphate that had overrun Vandal northern Africa and Visigoth Spain in 711, and then crossed the Pyrenees in 720 and entered Aquitaine, where the duke Eudo sustained the brunt of Arab attacks for the following ten years. Charles Martel halted their expansion into Europe at the Battle of Tours on 10 October 732. Muslim presence was contained to Narbonne, Aries, and the Iberian Peninsula, while rivalry between the houses of the Abbasides and the Ommeiads precluded staging another invasion. Frankish wars against paganism culminated in the subjugation of the Frisians in 734. He then strove to consolidate the strength of the Frankish kingdom by introducing order, while the figurehead kings were also subjected to his ruthless descendants following his death in 741, including his son, the Carolingian king Pepin the Short. He later deposed the last Merovingian king Childeric III in 751, and then assumed power for the newly established Carolingian dynasty over western continental Europe north of the Pyrenes mountains. Pepin would hereafter establish the rule of the mayor of the palace as the chief court official constituting the genuine authority as the head of state, whereas the appointed monarch would merely perform ceremonial functions.
Pepin ensured papal authority in Italy by subduing the Lombards who had first settled in Italy in 568 as the last of the wandering Germanic tribes, and were later threatening the papacy in Rome, after having wrested Pentapolis and Ravenna from them. These holdings were handed to the papacy of Stephen II in 756 to alleviate threats to the papal see from the Lombards who threatened the tenuous hold of the papacy over its territories during a time when Byzantine control over its holdings in Italy was in decline, and laid the foundations of its temporal greatness by establishing the papal states. Pepin chiefly spent the remainder of his life waging war until 768, including a seven-year struggle against the Arabs settled in southern Gaul, and forced the Aquitanians to submit to Frankish authority.
Western Europe as a whole remained composed of various kingdoms that had superseded the Western Roman Empire. The Germanic kingdoms were divided into vast estates in what became known as a loose administrative system that later became known as feudalism, with a patchwork of separate individual agreements at local levels that had developed gradually and irregularly without any planning as a pragmatic matter under the circumstances to maintain order. The power of the Germanic kings in war surpassed all decision making, since it depended on taking prompt action, and this power had become firmly entrenched during constant warfare while the entire nations became armies during times of continuous movements of conquering new territories through subjugating any other kingdoms. After the collapse of the Roman empire in the west, the German nations took hold of new permanent landholdings that the king had taken over and became the foundations of their power. They also held fighting units together through providing support in the form of land, by offering benefits for military services under the command of a king. In exchange for sacrificing their independence, the feudatories who owed allegiance to the king became feudal vassals that gained influence and power in their own permanent possessions that were granted by the king, and followed the same pattern of subdivision of land allocations with poorer individual vassals who were engaged in their service, with landholding being conditional upon faithful service to an overlord, in exchange for land becoming their absolute property.
The Carolingians established their own leadership by allocating landed estates to loyal followers, in exchange for pledging homage to their liege lords for this fief in an early version of statehood. The Frankish kings initiated a patchwork of regional defensive and administrative systems that came to be known as feudalism in the face of threats of armed aggression. This pattern of controlling noble vassals emanated from the Merovingian kings adopting the Roman custom of granting lands on the condition of providing military service, subject to certain agreements that placed them in the position of vassals, which later became known as feudal possessions, or fiefs. They took an oath of fidelity and gradually acquired privileges, including immunity from the interference of the royal justices.
Charles Martel sequestered large church estates as “benefices” that were parcelled out among the armed nobility who were equipped with horses, which required managing heavier expenses for military duties that became contingent on the extended use of cavalry, in exchange for these landholders to pay certain rent amounts to the church to which the property belonged. Martel thus theoretically initiated the fragmentation of Germanic territories. These “benefices” proved to be a powerful factor for the Carolingians to control their nobles, and whoever fell under the royal displeasure was likely to forfeit lands that they had received, not only as a reward for past services, but also as a pledge for forthcoming services of mainly a military nature. The lord who was lent land was in turn obliged to subdivide a certain part of it to be lent to those who were willing to be his military followers. In short, the nobility was compelled to replicate the king’s action on smaller scales. Their own followers who received secondary grants were obliged to swear loyalty, or fealty, and this oath, or homage, came to be incumbent on the original holders themselves as the king was regarded.
These chief landholders were those who answered the call to arms, who in turn was obliged to subdivide parts thereof to those who were willing to serve as vassal followers on a smaller scale. This feudal system later was completely applied throughout German states during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which was then gradually adapted throughout Europe. These fiefs of land or specific offices were not hereditary for centuries, and then lapsed into the heredity of the crown at the time of death of every holder, and there was to be a renewal of the grant at every change of the monarch or of the lord. These holdings eventually became hereditary during the thirteenth century, when the power of the king as the feudal monarch ended, and the spread of vassalage ruined unitary states as governance over various landholdings was subject to many masters, while the king was deprived of the ability to issue general laws or edicts for all of their subjects, when they no longer directly commanded those subjects to fight their battles. The episcopal sees likewise became feudal fiefs, in addition to performing ecclesiastical functions.
Medieval society was essentially characterised by the composition of three main classes with different functions. The clergy as the theoretically highest class served Almighty God and strived for the salvation of humanity, although the higher echelons of the clergy lived like nobles, and the lower clergy lived like peasants. The nobility composed of local landowners assumed the responsibility of protecting their landed estates theoretically defended the church and society, and eventually became hereditary. The peasantry in the countryside as the third provided for the material needs, before the emergence of growing towns divided the peasantry into town dwellers managing municipal and economic life apart from in the countryside, which would acquire economic equality with the nobility.
The development of the Frankish kingdom was an example of feudal anarchy. It became subdivided into three separate kingdoms until the end of the Merovingian period. The Carolingian dynasty would centralise statehood to an empire under Charles the Great, or Charlemagne, who was crowned the king of the Franks in 768. He engaged in approximately military expeditions that consolidated the Carolingian empire by 771 upon his brother Carloman’s death, and then sought to further expand his dominions, while his monarchical authority over the Frankish kingdom by reducing the power of regional dukes and counts was unchallenged who retained a fixed proportion of the tolls and taxes for their own sustenance while administering law and order in the jurisdictions under their authority. The title of duke was extinguished altogether, and border districts were set up as marks that were placed under the control of margraves or marquesses whose primary duty was to drive back or subdue neighbouring nations. His greatest achievements were characterised by overthrowing Lombard rule in Italy, subjugating the Saxons, reorganising Bavaria as a Frankish province, annihilating the powers of the Avars, and acquiring the imperial crown.
Charlemagne fought in defence of Christianity against the pagan Saxons from 772 to 785 who resisted against maintaining Frankish domination in Saxon territory. Bavaria was integrated as a Frankish province in 788. Charlemagne extended his realm by extinguishing the rule of the Lombards in Italy, ending two hundred and thirty-two years of Lombard control in 774, which had long threatened the papacy’s territorial possessions, and nothing remained of the Lombards apart from their name. Charlemagne hereafter seized their possessions in northern and central Italy, and then assumed the title of king of the Lombards and Patrician of the Romans. They were forced to convert to Christianity upon their defeat and becoming integrated into Charlemagne’s kingdom. Charlemagne intended to organise Italy during the pontificate of Leo III, and consented the Lombards could still remain inhabiting where their home had been, and named it Lombardy, and crowned his son Pepin as king of Italy, with his jurisdiction extending to Benevento, while the remainder of the peninsula continued under the dominion of the Byzantine empire, with which Charlemagne entered into an alliance.
Charlemagne continued expanding his influence eastward to 798, with continued suppression of ongoing Saxon resistance to Frankish rule due to maintaining their pagan beliefs and acting individually as separate groups. The autonomy of Saxony was eliminated altogether, and its population dispersed by 804, marking the definite end of Charlemagne’s holy war against them. The border marches, or the mark of Carinthia that extended from the Adriatic to the Danube and Austria were set up to defend Bavaria for its defence against the Avars in the east. The power of the Avars and various Slavs, such as the Czechs and the Bohemians, in the east was eventually annihilated from 791 until 796. Struggles continued against the Slavonians in Pomerania, the Danes in the north in reaction to their piratical incursions on the shores of France that ended in an uneasy truce, and also establishing a powerful naval force to defend against their further raids. Fighting against the Arabic Moors in Spain, beginning in 777, continued unabated as far as the Ebro, marking the territory of Catalonia between the Pyrenees and the Ebro, to preserve the border regions by establishing defensive buffer districts from further Islamic encroachments.
Charlemagne successfully systematically subdued all opposition through repeated military campaigns, leading to the creation of his empire, and settle new territories that were administered by appointed counts, and marches along the frontiers where he would wage war against the Bretons, Basques, Islamic Caliphates in the Iberian Peninsula, the Bavarians, Avars and various other Germanic and Slav peoples. He also successfully reinstated Leo III to the papacy in 799 in the face of local opposition to his consecration as the leader of the church in 795 as a commoner without political power and influence. Leo III recognised Charlemagne’s contributions to protecting western Christendom, with himself as the spiritual leader, and crowned Charlemagne the Roman Emperor on 25 December 800, regardless of opposition from the Empress Irene in Constantinople, who claimed the Byzantine empire had been recognised as the successor of the Roman empire. The Catholic church thus established an alliance with Charlemagne as a western Roman emperor, which removed the nominal subjection of the papacy to the emperors at Constantinople, which led to war between Charlemagne and the Byzantine empire between 806 and 810. By the end of his life in January 814, Charlemagne established control over all of central and western Europe, including holding control over land in northern Spain, and also in Italy outside of the independent papal states and Byzantine possessions.
Charlemagne’s sole surviving son Louis the Pious eventually became heir of the Holy Roman Empire, who Charlemagne himself had crowned in 813, marking the royal rather than papal prerogative, and was later crowned again by the papacy in 816 to maintain the Frankish-papal alliance. The regional rulers also proved to be unable to effectively defend their territories against Viking raiders exploiting internal strife among local rulers. These attacks had begun in West Frankish kingdom during the reign of Louis I, “the Pious,” while there was rapid decay without the exercise of Charlemagne’s abilities to uphold its stability and integrity. Louis “the German” received the East Frankish kingdom centered in Bavaria that included the Rhineland and Italy, Pippin received the Eastern Frankish kingdom centered around Aquitaine, and Lothair I, who was nominally the sovereign over the empire, acquired the strip between the other two brothers, Middle Francia, later known as Lotharingia, which consisted of the territories between the other two centered in the kingdom of Italy. Louis the Pious’s nephew Bernard reigned as king of Italy, following the death of his father, Pepin, the son of Charlemagne, until he was killed following a failed revolt against his cousin Lothair to acquire greater independence.
Louis the Pious named Lothair his sole successor in 817 as his sole successor, and was crowned co-emperor and king of Italy in 823, succeeding Bernard. Internecine warfare among them, composing of Pepin and Louis the German, king of Bavaria waging war against their father Louis the Pious, due to suspicion over the future possible reorganisation of the empire with prejudice to their new half-brother Charles the Bald, born of Louis the Pious’s second wife Judith and was to receive a separate kingdom created in 829, and force them to restore the 817 terms of the division of the empire. Lothair’s coronation was later revoked in 831, with prejudice to parceling land to Louis the Pious’s fourth son Charles. This new reorganisation was followed by further disputes with Louis the Pious’s three older sons, who forcibly deposed their father, prior to his reinstatement in 832, which led to further internecine warfare between various factions aligned with opposing magnates of the empire that continued until Louis the Pious’s death in 840, which was followed by further civil crisis in the Carolingian empire while his sons fought against each other for influence. The Frankish empire was left to Louis the Pious’s three surviving sons in 840 in conformity with dividing the empire according to tradition, with the constituent parts of the Frankish empire being maintained by force. Rather than precluding future internal conflict while making separate contributions to administer these expansive territories, a bitter civil war ensued over the division of the empire, owing to the personal weaknesses of Charlemagne’s successors, the incursions of external enemies, and the unmanageable size of the Carolingian empire. The Carolingian empire following Charlemagne’s death was thus a gradual process of disintegration.
The Carolingian empire was divided into larger and smaller districts known as counties and hundreds, with every county ruled by count who retained a fixed proportion of the tolls and taxes for their own sustenance while administering justice, and then sending proper contingents of able-bodied fighters. Central authority was to be maintained through issuing decrees known as capitularies that addressed various matters regarding the empire, such as administering royal estates, the duties of the clergy, and military organisation, as forms of situational consultation between the monarchy and regional rulers as attempt to reach agreement on matters of common concern, issued in the form of instructions to royal officials who were to implement them in separate regions.
Charlemagne’s efforts to expect the utmost military service out of every freeman contributed to the development of the independence of individual feudal lords. Every able-bodied man in Charlemagne’s empire was obliged to perform military service for a certain number of days, and to appear in camp equipped at his own expense, while possessing their own unit of land and income, or belonging to another individual who could support them during the times of services for either offensive or defensive purposes, or otherwise pay a monetary fine. A decree was issued for those who were too manifestly poor to make this possible. Several individuals could make contributions to support a common representative. However, this military service rule was nevertheless economically distressing for those who had to give up their individual freedom and became serfs for their more fortunate neighbours, particularly as fighting with armour on horseback became increasingly more common, and added to the military service costs. Economic capacity thus coalesced into the creation of war bands supported by local military leaders who could support their followers with necessary equipment and provisions for prolonged training for and actual armed service.
Large landowners thus developed into petty potentates during the development of a social revolution in which feudalism was established. A central monarchy could thereby no longer depend directly on their subjects, as they were undermined by powerful feudal lords. Ordinary men who were unable to perform military service and could not pay a fine for not doing so, were obliged to renounce their freedom in exchange for protection from local lords against endemic warfare while living and working on the land. In short, the poorest parties came to depend on the wealthier ones, who were in turn forced to become followers, or vassals providing service for the richest landowners. Receiving a king’s favour could change someone’s rank in society, but supporting that rank required possessing a territory to maintain loyalty to a central authority.
The possessor of vast estates found it to his advantage to divide them up along with the peasants that lived on them among his vassals who agreed to accompany him on a military expedition, and assist him when he was put to any unusually great expense. Land granted upon the terms mentioned was called a fief that defined the rights and duties of each toward the other. One who held a fief might himself become a lord by granting a portion of his fief to a vassal upon terms similar to those on which he held his lands of his lord, or sovereign. The vassal of a vassal became a sub-vassal. Whenever either party died, the oaths had to be renewed by the heir. The basic element of the feudal contract was the exchange of rights over land given by the lord and military and other services given by the vassal.
The large and amorphous Carolingian empire could not be permanently maintained, and ultimately underwent disintegration during the latter ninth century. Continual internecine warfare between the three kingdoms threatened stability, as well as devastating incursions from Vikings from the north, Slavs in the east, and Muslims from the south from their entrenched territorial possessions in Spain, northern Africa and Sicily, which led to organising regional defensive forces among local landowners marshalling support among the able-bodied in these regions. Vikings staged attacks on disparate parts of the kingdom, including Rouen in 841 and Nantes in 843. They sailed on the Seine River under their leader Ragnar Lothbrok and attacked Paris in 845. A large body of them sailed up the Elbe River to Hamburg in about 847, and burned most of this town. Chartres was attacked in 857, and Paris was besieged in 857-858 while the Franks proved incapable of staging an organised resistance to their incursions, which led to local counts becoming increasingly autonomous lords that no longer derived their powers from the authority of a central monarchy, and establishing their local power bases on the strength of their local loyal vassals, as the Vikings broke down the former imperial administration. who ran their boats into the rivers and plundering as they travelled in their vessels over long distances seeking battle honour and loot to acquire status and wealth, as well as engaging in international trade and exploration.
While the Bohemians and Moravians constituted the eastern boundaries of Louis’s possessions, Louis and Charles challenged and overcame Lothair’s claim to supremacy as emperor in the battle of Fontenoy in 841. Louis the Pious’s successors later divided all of the lands of the Carolingian empire equally and creating three independent states in an attempt to resolve discord in the Treaty of Verdun in 843 as what was to be the final partition of what had been Charlemagne’s empire, in an attempt to demonstrate an outward appearance of unity, although it was nearly as arbitrary and unnatural as that which Pepin the Short attempted to set in view of regional conditions in terms of local identity and languages spoken, although nevertheless marking the origins of Germany as the Teutonic kingdom and France otherwise known as Carolingia as distinct nationalities. This agreement was to facilitate the defences of each detached portions against predatory expeditions from the Normans and Saracens, while those defences were simultaneously weakened by the turbulence of fighting among the great vassals in the interiors, following the earlier distinctions between the older territories of Austrasia in the east and Neustria in the west, both territories west of the Rhine, and territory in between them. These regions became exclusively German, whereas Neustria and Burgundy developed into modern France.
All three brothers were called kings of the Franks, and theoretically allowed a certain degree of pre-eminence to the eldest as emperor, but were quite independent of him in practice. Charles II, “the Bald,” received the West Frankish realm, encompassing Neustria, centered around Aquitaine, which later turned into France, Belgium and parts of Spain. Ludwig, or Louis I, “the German,” the king of Bavaria, received an Eastern Frankish kingdom, east of the Rhine River and north of Italy composed of eastern Switzerland, Bavaria, Saxony, Franconia and Swabia, and Lothair I retained his holdings extending from the Frisian Islands in the North Sea, including Holland, eastern Belgium, southward to between the Rhine and Meuse rivers, including Burgundy and western Switzerland, to southern Italy, along with the title of emperor, without exercising sovereignty over the neighbouring states in actual practice. It was difficult to maintain law and order, including due to the Treaty of Verdun had arbitrarily sundered existing divisions among church dioceses and the lands of different noble landowners.
The Carolingian empire was thereby shattered without central leadership and antagonism among his descendants, which continued thereafter, and was not conducive to preserving law and order in general during ongoing enmity between competing nobles over continued dissatisfaction about the disposition of territory. These developments led to the fracturing of central and southern Europe into several independent kingdoms, as the great vassals were more intent on their own personal aggrandisement. Further partitions and the aspirations of non-Carolingian nobles threatened to cause the empire to collapse. By the late ninth century, five independent kingdoms emerged – West Francia, East Francia, Upper and Lower Burgundy, and Italy, with only East Francia remaining under Carolingian control.
Central authority continued diminishing in internecine warfare that especially fractured East Francia, and the ongoing threats from the Vikings in the north, Arabs in the south, and Magyars and various western Slavs in the east. “Stem duchies” emerged in East Francia, consisting of Franconia, Saxony, Bavaria, Swabia and Lotharingia, in which a central monarchy could defend their territories against various invasions, rather than remaining depending on a weak central authority. King Louis was thus often at war resisting the Vikings, the neighbouring Slavs, and Charles the Bald. The Magyars who settled on the present-day Hungarian plain remained threatening the empire, which also remained subjected to Viking raids that reached Aachen, the Rhineland, and Paris during a time when the Carolingian empire was undergoing civil strife, in addition to revolts by the Bretons and in Aquitaine against the Frankish rule of Charles the Bald.
Lothair I remained in Aachen until his death in 855, when his possessions were divided among his three sons in the Treaty of Prüm, which confirmed Louis II as the king of Italy and nominal emperor, Lothair II received the present day Low Countries, Lorraine and part of Burgundy, and Charles received Provence and southern Burgundy, while West and East Francia remained separate entities. These territories were further divided upon his death in 863, when his surviving brothers, Louis the German and Charles the Bald, received those territories along the Rhine River. Central Francia as Lotharingia was the kingdom with the least stability and cohesion under Lothair II. These territories were seized upon his death in 870 and were divided between Louis the German and Charles the Bald, and thus disappeared altogether as separate dominions. A degree of stability in these the Carolingian successor states in the shattered Holy Roman Empire was restored by the Treaty of Mersen in 870. This settlement determined there would be West Frankish kingdom, a loosely unified state based in Paris, and an East Frankish kingdom, a highly decentralized entity with various jurisdictions without a central authority, while Louis II retained his title as the king of Italy.
Louis II, Lothair I’s oldest son, was tasked with defending Italy, where the Saracens occupied Bari in the south, settled in Apulia. Moorish raiders engaged in further incursions in 842 when they sailed up the Rhône river, and devastated the countryside around Aries. Saracens sailed into the Tiber in 846, and attacked the havens of Ostia and Porto, and advanced on Rome where they plundered St. Peter’s. Benevento was retaken from the Saracens, which led to his coronation as co-emperor and king of Italy. He ruled the kingdom of Sicily from 842, and spent of his reign fighting the Saracens who had occupied Sicily, Bari and Taranto. They remained threatening central Frankish kingdom, including sacking St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome in 846. Since Lothair II could not retain control over territories to the north, he concentrated on unifying Italy under his control, and managed to expel the Saracens from Bari in 871. Following his death without male heirs in 875, Charles the Bald invaded Provence and Italy, and took over the kingdom of Italy, while facing resisting the designated heir, Carloman of Bavaria who was supported by the leading nobility in Italy. He also fought against his nephew Pepin II in Aquitaine who gathered support from the local nobility there with Viking allies, and fighting a revolt by Bretons who established their autonomy. Charles the Bald was also to face ongoing threats of Viking incursions, and divided Lotharingia between himself and Louis the German in 869 following the death of Lothair II, which composed boundaries that were almost precisely the same as would later be set in 1871. Fighting between them continued, regardless of their territorial agreements they had agreed on in 842, as Charles the Bald was unable to contain Viking incursions that ravaged western France, which led to the local nobility to summon Louis the German to take his place as the new monarch. He was hailed as the new West Frankish king following a successful invasion, and then returned to East Francia with the West Frankish nobility pledging their support, who then returned to the purchased allegiance to Charles the Bald, with the division being confirmed again in 860.
During the same time, Louis the German dealt with incursions from neighbouring Wends, Bohemians, Danes, Magyars and Vikings. The necessity of maintaining an army almost constantly in the field gave the nobility and clergy the opportunity of exacting better terms for their support, and the independent duchies that Charlemagne suppressed were gradually re-established as Louis II diminished his own power while protecting his territory from invasion. Undermining central authority was further aggravated by fighting against Charles the Bald in 875 in reaction to his seizing the title of emperor upon subduing opposition in Italy, and quelling insurrections staged by his sons, Carloman of Bavaria, Louis the Young, and Charles III, commonly known as the Fat.
Succession in what been the Carolingian empire continued its fragmentation during this time. Following the death of Ludwig I in 876, the kingdom of East Francia was divided among his three sons, with Carloman receiving Bavaria, Louis the Young receiving Saxony, Franconia and eastern Lotharingia, and Charles the Fat receiving Swabia, Alemannia and Alsace. Further decentralizing followed subsequent inheritances, with a provisional settlement being reached in 880 in the Treaty of Ribemont, as the last agreement between the Carolingians. Charlemagne’s empire was briefly reunited in 884 for the first time since 840 under Charles the Fat, who became the Holy Roman Emperor by outliving the other heirs of the various feuding family branches. However, he was unable to administer the empire in view of its size, and continual Viking attacks. The Vikings extorted large amounts of gold from Charles the Fat in 882 and then more from the West Frankish rulers in 884. They besieged Paris in 885-886 for eight months, when they were resisted by Count Odo. Although the city’s defences held against this siege due to the preparations made by the Bishop of Paris and Count Odo, and were eventually dispersed through a large payment, while they continued undermining the weak central authority.
Charles the Fat was denounced for his feeble leadership, and subsequently dethroned as a weak ruler who was succeeded by his nephew Arnulf of Carinthia. He was appointed king of Eastern Francia and Lotharingia by a council of nobles at Tribur in 887, under whom the Frankish empire split apart permanently in the first independent action of the Frankish secular rulers who acted without the sanction of the bishops, and introduced a fundamental reaction against the idea of a universal empire. Central and southern Europe would hereafter disintegrate into several separate kingdoms. The remnants of the Carolingian empire remained divided, which had degenerated into a feudal title acquired to assume the loyalty of Italian nobles, crowning whoever controlled Italy as the Holy Roman Emperor, with the last such emperor being Berengar I, who had been the margrave of Friaul and was crowned king of Pavia in 888, amid the considerable demoralisation in the Italian by this time, when there had been twelve weak monarchs from the overall downfall of the Carolingian empire. Nearly all of them, including four Burgundians, four Italians, three Germans, and one French, had been arbitrarily deposed by various factions of the nobility. Berengar I was later assassinated in 924, which effectively ended the validity of this title.
During this time, Rudolph was made king of Upper Burgundy, between the Jura mountains and the Alps. Boso, a West Frankish count, had founded the kingdom of Aries as a separate Burgundian kingdom. West Francia separated from East Francia under Charles the Simple of West Francia in 898. Arnulf remained engaged in warfare against the Slavs, such as the Moravians and Bohemians and the Vikings, as well as campaigning in Italy until his death in 899, where he was crowned as king and then emperor in 896 as the last Carolingian to bear this title. He was succeeded by his son Louis the Child as a Frankish ruler, and his illegitimate son, Swentibold, was given Lorraine that was made into a kingdom.
A civil war broke out following the death of Charles the Fat in 888, leading to local nobles competed for control of the monarchy. External attacks continued unabated as constant backgrounds while regional rulers asserted their independence during the rule of Louis the Child until his death in 911 as the last Carolingian king in East Francia, whose reign was plagued by ongoing Magyar raids, which utterly defeated German forces in 910. Internal turmoil continued as local governors acquired greater authority, which included reinstating dukes in the German states, while the nobility remained engaging in perpetual private warfare in the absence of a stable central authority, as feudalism superseded the earlier constitution of the Carolingian empire. Further fragmentation of the Carolingian empire was marked by Charles the Simple ceding northern Frankish territory from the mouth of the Seine to Caen to the Normans as a defensive buffer against further Viking attacks. The sons Tancred de Hauteville would proceed from this region to southern Italy, where they would found the Norman kingdom of Sicily, while other Normans would stage an invasion of England. Other Viking populations would develop in their regions of origin, as Gorm the Ancient would create the Danish kingdom, and Harald Haardrada would follow his example in Norway.
The direct dependence of the nobility and the clergy upon the Carolingian emperor that Charlemagne had instituted was virtually at an end, as the empire disintegrated into petty sovereignties that composed regional authorities between the central monarchy and the local populations. The estates that that granted to these regional authorities in exchange for their local administrations, known as liens that had been granted prior to reverting to the central monarchical authority obliged them to secure the loyalty of retainers and the local populations, and follow the emperor in the event of war, with their proportion of fighting forces, which they willingly performed in the interest of pursuing opportunities for glory and plunder. However, quarrels among them led to the disintegration of the empire by claiming permanent and absolute control of their possessions. Nobles united under the rule of counts or dukes in defence of their independence against the exercise of imperial central power.
Conrad I, the duke of Thuringia, was elected the king of East Francia in 911. Conrad refused to acknowledge the independence of the five stem duchies, yet proved to be powerless to completely check their independence while waging unsuccessful wars against them with the support of the church authorities. Waging warfare against the duchies of Lorraine, Saxony, Swabia and Bavaria were almost universally unsuccessful. His efforts composed a final attempt to create a strong central monarchy that was to stem the increasing growth of the local individual powers ultimately failed.
The uselessness of this policy led to delivering the insignia of royalty to Henry, “the Fowler,” the Duke of Saxony in 918, as the most powerful of the stem duchies. Henry became the kingdom’s first non-Frankish ruler that would further consolidate the division between the kingdom of France and what would become known as the kingdom of Germany. Henry I was the most powerful of the stem dukes, who had opposed all efforts of founding a government on autocratic efforts, but could yet preserve East Francia, and was elected king in 919 following Conrad I’s death in the previous year as a result of wounds sustained during fighting against marauding Hungarians, and entrusted Henry as being sufficiently powerful and intelligent to rule over the German states. Henry managed to bring a degree of order to East Francia by seizing control of Lotharingia while taking advantage of confusion in West Francia, which became a ducal fief of the German crown, preventing renewed Hungarian incursions through inflicting a decisive defeat near Merseburg in 933, fighting against the Slavs that led to forcing the duke of Bohemia to pledge homage, subduing the Wends in the northeast of the German states, and waging war against the Danes who had invaded Saxony and Friesland, leading to driving them back and taking possession of the territory between the Eider and the Schlei rivers. He also introduced more orderly fighting methods to meet the threats of the Hungarians more effectively by having the nobles and their vassals trained to fight on horseback. Another successful development was creating the burgher class by establishing strongholds to provide refuge by building walls around existing towns and fortresses around them, and marshalling resources to maintain them in the form of freemen and stores.
Henry I also sought to keep the power of the stem duchies in check through negotiation and conciliation, rather than violence and repression, without depending on church authorities. Other distinctions of Henry of Saxony’s rule were instituting military reforms, and rather than exerting force to repress individual dukes, he attempted negotiation and conciliation to maintain peaceful relations. Henry stemmed the Hungarian invasions, and created the Nordmark in 928 as a frontier post during the first wave of German colonisation in eastern Europe, which would later compose the core of the Prussian state, the Margrave of Brandenburg between the Elbe and Oder rivers, in 1157, and the later creation of East Prussia in the thirteenth century by the Order of Teutonic Knights. His last undertaking was waging war against the Danes, which resulted in claiming the territory between the Eider and the Schlei rivers. Nevertheless, he was unable to consolidate absolute rule, and therefore the German states remained divided as a form of confederation of semi-autonomous duchies under the nominal leadership of his son, Otto I the duke of Saxony, who succeeded him as the heir apparent of East Francia in 936. Impractical Frankish inheritance laws that had led to fragmentation of a central monarchy were abandoned in favour of the most powerful dukes electing a ruler, Henry did not divide his possessions among his sons, and disregarded tradition by not having this monarchy subject to an election by the dukes of the realm, who elected Otto I, also known as Otto the Great, in Erfurt in 936.
Otto I remained engaged in suppressing revolts against the duchies from 937 to maintain East Francia intact as a confederation of semi-autonomous dukes that he appointed, while also turning to bishops and abbots for administrative support. Otto I thus established the central authority of the monarchy through subduing opposition, in addition to cooperating with the ecclesiastical authorities, and brought stability within the state. while facing conflicts with the Slavs, Vikings and West Francia. He was repeatedly involved in disputes in the West Frankish kingdom, and helped his brother-in-law Louis against the dukes of France and Normandy, as well as waging war against the Danes and compelled Harald Bluetooth to become his vassal, and set up the mark of Schleswig to defend the northern border. The duke of Poland likewise became Otto I’s vassal. His German margrave vassals waged war against Slavs, and acquired new territory along the Baltic shores and the Oder River, where German colonies were created.
Otto I then attempted to extend his influence into Italy in 951 to reacquire a key region of the Carolingian empire that had been undergoing feudal anarchy, and then set up Berengar II as the king of Italy as his vassal in the interest of established his authority over the church, and thereby united the German and Italian states under his control. He staged an armed intervention into Italy in 951 to take the possession of the Italian states and thus pave the way to restoring the Carolingian empire, and became the king of the Lombards and of the Italians.
Otto I then waged resumed warfare against the Slavic peoples to the east of Saxony, beginning with the Bohemians who had created a united state, and then the Magyars, who were defeated by available volunteer fighters who were able to equip themselves with their own equipment and weapons at the Battle of Lechfeld on 10 October 955. The Magyars were thus finally driven back eastward to where they eventually settled permanently in present day Hungary in 1000, while the eastern border of the Holy Roman Empire was conclusively secured against them thereafter. The boundary of the German states was thus set further eastward hereafter, which included ensuring the peace and security of the Bavarian East March, which laid the foundations for Austria.
Otto I then turned to expand his influence in Slavic territory of the Wends, as well as seizing control of much of northern Italy from between 958 and 962 while subduing a revolt from Berengar II who threatened the papacy of John XII by besieging Rome. John XII petitioned Otto I for aid, to which he responded by forcing Berengar II to retreat. Otto I was then crowned as the Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation in 962, in exchange for pledging to defend the papacy against all adversaries, making this time as the beginning of the first German empire. This development also ended the ongoing internecine warfare in Italy, while the bishops of Italy were left with the administration of the cities. West Francia remained as a separate autonomous state while the Holy Roman Empire was reconstituted under Otto I, whereas the remaining regions of the Charlemagne’s former empire constituted themselves in the kingdoms of Burgundy, Provence, Italy, and the separate Papal states. The alliance between the Holy Roman Empire remained in place when Pope John XIII crowned Otto I’s son emperor as Otto II on 25 December 967, thus creating a dynasty that would continue until 1024. He would strive to secure the empire for his descendants with the underlying hope to secure an alliance with the court of Constantinople, and to rid the Italian peninsula of the Arabs. He was determined to exert pressure on the Greeks by invading their possessions in Apulia and Calabria, and besieged Bari, prior to withdrawing and offering to enter negotiations for an alliance, which were rebuffed.
A peace settlement was ultimately reached following a revolution and a change of regime in Constantinople, and the marriage of a Greek princess Theophano to Otto II in April 972 in return for peace in Italy. Fighting against eastern Francia was ultimately ceased due to internal discords there, and Poland, Bohemia and Denmark acknowledged the overlordship of the Holy Roman Empire, when he sought to subjugate southern Italy. Apulia and Calabria and Naples remained nominally parts of the Byzantine empire. Capua, Benevento, Spoleto and the March of Camerino remained as fiefs from the Holy Roman Empire held by Duke Pandulf the Ironhead who brough Salerno into subjection. Both Germans and Greeks were threatened by the Saracens who were extending their influence along the Mediterranean. They had driven the last Greeks out of Sicily in 964, and had turned their attention to southern Italy from 976, as the Greeks were too weak to resist these encroachments, as well as were threatened by Pandulf. Otto II refused to comply with Byzantine warnings about entering their territory on the Italian peninsula, and invaded Apulia without support from Pandulf’s mutually hostile descendants. He crossed through Salerno in May 982 toward Calabria, and a battle against the Saracens ensued near Colonne, which was followed by Otto’s defeat as a result of his reckless pursuit of the retreating forces who took advantage of terrain conditions in which Otto’s forces were hemmed in and destroyed. The Saracens consequently remained in possession of Apulia and Calabria.
Fragmentation of political authority continued as various territories continued to be redistributed throughout the disintegration of the earlier stem duchies, which were superseded by smaller hereditary principalities that were held as fiefs by princes of the empire and the consolidation of their powers. The Frankish duchies of Lotharingia, Saxony, Bavaria, Franconia and Swabia continually changed political shapes, including parts of Swabia and Lotharingia coalescing into Switzerland as an enduring entity that became permanent in 1499, whereas Swabia as a whole disintegrated into different tiny states. Connections between a central authority and a network of subordinate ties were not ensured in the various German states throughout the Middle Ages, whereas there were separate developments in consolidating a central monarchy in other European states, such as in France and England, were established on the strength of firmer ties between the central monarchy and its vassals.
Charlemagne’s successors in the German parts of his empire hardly maintained control over semi-autonomous regions held by various dukes who yielded only nominal obedience to the king as lower ranking fief holders under their rule. The western, or French, kings likewise faced difficulties keeping control of their vassals while these two parts were continually waging war on each other and the king. The Carolingian empire thus became divided into numerous petty states that caused constant bloodshed as a result of their competing ambitions, in addition to facing devastating raids from foreign threats. This subsequent time of confusion, some freemen were forced by powerful neighbours to change the free tenure of their lands into feudal tenure, while others made the change of their own free will to acquire protection against great nobles or foreign invaders, while those who were unable to protect themselves lost their freedom altogether.
Civil warfare at local levels continued following division of territories in the feudal states, which led to ongoing anarchy, in which armed force was the only effective law. This internal demoralisation in Europe was further aggravated by Viking, Muslim and Magyar raids, which inevitably led to the necessity for establishing armed forces to provide protection at local levels, which led to any central authority becoming increasingly more sub-divided. The title of the emperor became increasingly irrelevant in practice, and the papacy was also put up or cast down at will by local rulers. These developments resulted in the crumbling of the powers of the Carolingian kings as the feudal lords in the German states, particularly in the main districts of Saxony, Franconia, Saxony and Swabia in which the leaders took the title of duke, asserted their independence on the strength of their own landed resources and vassals, whereas the bishoprics and abbeys supported the weakened central monarchy, and provided levies of their own vassals when necessary while exercising both ecclesiastical and secular control in their lands during several centuries of constant internal disorder and local warfare.
Society at this time, especially after Charlemagne, was thus organised in the absence of effective central authority, so that each decentralised territory, which was organised to draw upon for military purposes, could drawing from its own resources. The king was followed by his nobles being his vassals who became lords. Kings granted and protected the lands of their subordinate nobles, who swore and oath and military support to the king when it was required. In turn, they hired knights as men-at-arms composed of private armies who possessed the ability to fight on foot or on horseback, following the adoption of the stirrup from Pannonian Avars, as their own vassals, and were able to bequeath their fiefs to their descendants.
Feudalism was held together by the strength of its alliances, which were hereditary as well as contractual and were secured by a ceremony known as homage. Vassals pledged to stay loyal and perform their duties for their lord. The landed nobility, like kings, made every effort to acquire as many vassals as they could while military strength lay in numbers. Since it was impossible to maintain armies by payment, the vassals received land as a fief, on which the vassals were expected to live while supplying themselves with weapons and were supported by the peasants living on the land. Landholders who had large estates and could spare a portion of them were accustomed to grating some of their manors to another person on the condition that the one receiving the land should swear loyalty to the giver, should fight for him on certain occasions, and should lend his aid when particular difficulties arose. Depending on the size of the fief he received, the vassal promised to provide his lord with a larger or smaller number of knights, fully equipped for battle, whenever called upon to do so. It was in this way that the relation of lord and vassal originated. The vassal who received the land pledged his allegiance to his lord, and the lord, on the other hand, not only let his vassal have land, but also agreed to protect him when it was necessary.
In addition to military service, the vassal swore to be the lord’s loyal follower, and to support him in any quarrels, and in return, the lord was to protect his vassal for unlawful molestation. A vassal was also normally expected to make money payments to his lord on special occasions, such as when the lord’s oldest daughter got married or his son was knighted. A vassal was also supposed to attend his lord’s court at specified times of the year. If two of the lord’s vassals quarreled, their dispute could be settled by the lord in consultation with the other vassals. The great vassals who held their land directly from the king at the apex of this system became almost independent of him as soon as their fiefs were granted to them and their descendants. Their vassals often paid little attention to the king’s commands since they had not done homage to the king himself. From the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, the king of what would become France or Germany did not rule over a great realm occupied by subjects who owed him obedience as their lawful sovereign, paid him taxes, and were bound to fight under his banner as the head of state. As a feudal landlord himself, the king had a right to demand fidelity and certain services from those who were his vassals. However, the great mass of the people over whom he ruled in name, whether they belonged to the nobility or not, owed little to the king directly, because they lived on the lands of other feudal lords, they were reasonably independent.
In practice, feudal obligations were not fulfilled except when the lord operating as tyrannical regional independent sovereign in the districts under their control was sufficiently powerful to enforce them. The oath of fidelity was constantly broken by both vassal and lord, who paid little attention to their solemn promises. Hence, war in all its forms was the law of the feudal world, and formed the chief occupation of the nobles who held the land and were supposed to govern it. An ambitious vassal was likely to make war, first, upon each of the lords to whom he had done homage; secondly, upon the bishops and abbots with whom he was brought into contact and whose control he particularly disliked; thirdly, upon his fellow vassals; and lastly upon his own vassals, while everyone seemed bent on profiting to the full from the permanent or temporary weakness of their neighbours, while each feudal lord strove to establish regional their local independence, with disputes constantly arising concerning proper boundaries between neighbouring lands.
A feudal lord could theoretically force his vassals to settle their disputes in an orderly manner before his court, but often he was neither able nor inclined to bring about a peaceful settlement, and he would frequently have found it difficult to carry out the decisions of his own court if he had wished to do so, while only force could bring a dispute to a close. Moreover, there was no provision for prompt settlement of disputes that might arise between those who were vassals of two different lords, which could come to involve their respective lords, each of whom was theoretically bound to defend his subordinate. Hence, the vassals were left to fight out their quarrels among themselves, and they found their chief interest in life in so doing while all members of the class of professional warriors were measured by the common test of prowess in battle. Warfare would remain endemic to enrich political leaders while impoverishing and weakening their enemies at the cost of aggrandising the assets of the aggressors seizing revenues and possessions.
How and why were European territories further reorganized during this period of European history?
What are evident developments in terms of political organisation?
Who were the highest levels of authority, and how did they set forth their influences?
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