Couple of smaller things, now.
Firstly,
The empire of king Heden of Thuringia
Territory controlled by Heden in 695, after the
defeat of king Chlodomer of Austrasia at Liège.
The Thuringian king Heden played a pivotal role in the history of Francia, particularly in the transition from Merovingian hegemony through the rise of the Arnulfings. However, the story of how the Thuringians changed history doesn't start with Heden, but rather with his father, Radulf.
Radulf was born into the Duchy of Thuringia, a vassal state of the Merovingian dynasty under the suzerainty Sigebert II of Austrasia. He came of age in the late 630s, and became king in 641, just a few years before the beginning of a tumultuous period in Frankish history. Until his death in 640 CE, Sigebert II had, directly or by proxy, ruled the lands of Austrasia, Neustria and parts of Aquitania. Upon his death a dispute emerged between his brother, Childebert III, king of Burgundy-Orléans and duke of Poitiers and Clermont, and his nephew Corbus II, king of Neustria (Paris) and duke of Périgueux and Limoges. Sigebert had dies without an heir to any of his many titles. Furthermore, Sigebert had been regent for Corbus II, who had ascended to the throne at an age too young to rule in his own right. However, as years had passed, Corbus claimed that he now ruled as full sovereign in Neustria and his duchies, and that a closest legitimate heir could be found for Austrasia elsewhere in the dynasty; Childebert claimed that he held suzerainty over Neustria and that, being the eldest descendant of the previous King of the Franks, he had right to choose the succession of the kingship of Austrasia. The two went to war. Corbus was killed in 644, his two young sons, Chlodomer and Theudebald, being sent into hiding, and Childebert proclaimed himself King of the Franks, reigning until his natural death in 663. His reign was followed by the disastrous internal conflict known as
Childebert's War between his sons Clovis II and Dagobert I, as well as the sons of Corbus, Chlodomer and Theudebald, and eventually even involving the mighty Gothic Empire under Witiges II.
However, something else also happened in 644 CE. The chaos unfolding in the land of his sovereign allowed Radulf of Thuringia to rebel, proclaiming himself King of the Thuringians. The Bavarian king Garibald II was the first to suffer from this new kingship, as his lands were quickly invaded by Radulf, who established himself as the new king of Bavaria in 647.
Radulf died in 670, having spent the latter half of his career conducting diplomacy - notably overseeing the marriage of Heden to the widow Queen Regnant of the Langobards, Theodota - and defending his realm from various invaders, particularly Slavs and Avars. Heden, his only son, took the thrones of Bavaria and Thuringia in the year of his father's death. He additionally held widespread influence in Langobardia, even after the regnancy of Theodota ended with her son Garibald's coming of age. The early years of his rule was broadly similar to the latter years of his father's; diplomacy, internal consolidation, and defense of the eastern frontier. This internal consolidation particularly focused on the southern country of Langobardia, where he never officially ruled but which was functionally a part of his state.
The climax of Heden's reign came in 690. The duke of the Saxons had died the previous year, replaced by a war-hungry cousin, desipte the presence of a legitimate, if quite young, son of the previous duke. Heden took the opportunity to expand his reach, and invaded the Duchy of the Saxons, causing the new ruler to flee north and spliting the duchy in two, with the western half falling under his sovereignty, ruled by-proxy by the boy of the previous duke. This was the first conquest of Heden's reign, and the first expansion of the kingdom since Radulf's rebellion. Perhaps drunk on the resounding victory, Heden launched an attack on the Frankish city of Aachen in 692. By 694 one of the two co-kings of Austrasia, Chlodomer, had been slain by Heden in a battle near Liège in which Heden managed to encircle the Frankish forces.
What followed was the Massacre of the Funeral; the murder, orchestrated by the Mayor of the Palace of Metz, Pepin of Herstal, of Chlodomer's brother Theudebald along with all but one of the sons of both of the now-dead kings. The last remaining son, the thirteen year-old Chlothar III, was proclaimed King of Austrasia, but functionally held very little authority outside of what Pepin of Herstal permitted.
This was the apex of Thuringian power: subjugation of more than half of Germania and victory over a Merovingian king. But it was not to last. Pepin rapidly countered the Thuringian forces after having consolidated his power at home, and Heden would died at his hands just two years after the victory at Liège. Thuringia rapidly collapsed as Garibald of Langobardia established full control of his own kingdom and subjugated the Bavarians, while Pepin's war continued eastward into Saxony, shattering both halves and causing a period of governmental disintegration in the region. Thuringia itself was subjugated by the campaigns of Charles Martel, Prince and Duke of the Franks and regent of King Theudoald I, Pepin's successor.
While the kingdom that Radulf and Heden built did not have much of a lasting presence in its own right, the effect that it had on the evolution of western Europe cannot be denied. Heden's invasion was a crucial domino in the process that led to the rise of the Arnulfing dynasty under Pepin of Herstal, which would go on to consolidate power over nearly all of Francia and Germany, finally bringing to and end the old Merovingian dynasty.
Secondly,
Rise and fall of the Yolian dynasty of Mauretania
A Roman-Berber-Gothic dynasty in North Africa
also called the Irnuhanid dynasty, from the first two rulers, both named Irnuhan
Rulers, left to right:
Dux Mauretania Irnuhan II
744 to 771
oversaw the final seperation from the Gothic Empire
Rex Mauretania Jordanes III
801 to 840
first conflicts between the Muslims and the Mauretanians
Rex Mauretania Massena I 'the Great'
840 to 888
conquests of Barghawata and Spania
Rex Mauretania Johannes I
898 to 921
victory in the succession war following Massena I
The Diocese of Mauretania was first established by Witteric I after the Gothic Civil War. As with the rest of the diocese, the office of
Dux Mauretania was non-hereditary, rather being appointed by the emperor. However, this arrangement became almost entirely symbolic after the rapid collapse of Ravennese imperial power following the death of emperor Witiges II in 679 AD. During the period of imperial decline, Mauretania was initially ruled as something resembling an aristocratic republic, with the nobility ruling in concert under a
Dux which they elected - informally, of course; the law was still that the diocese was solely at the appointment of the emperor in Ravenna. Around the turn of the 8th, a native Berber nobleman (albeit with much Gothic blood) with a strong backing from the countryside was elected
Dux. His name was Irnuhan I, and he spent his reign consolidating his power, mentoring his son to be a worthy successor, and breaking the power of the Gothic and Roman nobility with the constant threat of mobilising his broad base of tribal leaders and merchant-bourgeoisie against the nobility. 744 saw the end of the period of electoral noble-confederacy in Mauretania, and the beginning of true dynastic monarchy, with the election of Irnuhan II as
Dux Mauretania.
The Diocese, and later the Kingdom, was based in the ancient coastal city of
Yol (from the Romaic Ἰὼλ), founded initially by the Carthaginians and perhaps best known by the Roman names
Iol Caesarea and
Caesarea-in-Mauretania.
The period from the reign of Irnuhan II to the death of Jordanes III was largely an era of consolidation and trade in the Mauretania. The rich cities of the coast facilitated an expansion of royal authority into the backcountry of the Atlas mountains. The only conflicts in this period were naval skirmishes between the Moors and the Goths, terrestrial skirmishes between the Moors and hostile Berber tribes, and a brief war between the Kingdom and the Empire of the Muslims during the Vandal-Sahmid wars. This changed with the ascent of Massena I, known to history as Massena the Great. Massena was one of the sons of king Jordanes III, and had spent almost his entire adult life defending and expanding the frontiers, and as a result he had become highly proficient in the art of war. He spent the first decade of his reign in the west, subjugating the Masmuda Berbers. In early 851 he seized upon a period of disarray in the Gothic Empire in the aftermath of the mysterious disappearance and presumed death of emperor Ardaric I, and crossed between the Pillars of Hercules, into Spania. The first of Massena's two wars of conquest in the peninsula concluded just four years after the crossing; the Ravennese provincial governors of Hispalis and Spartaria were forced to submit to Massena's reign in 855. By 860, another campaign had shattered the Kingdom of Spania, creating two more subservient duchies, Evora and Emerita, and forcing the
Rex Hispania, formerly based in Emerita, to flee to Toledo.
However, it was not to last, as by 860 the Sahmid Sultanate of Alexandria had fully consolidated their hegemony over the remains of the Muslim Imamate, and had shifted policy from subservient pacificism under the Imam to aggressive expansion of the Dar-al-Islam. They invaded Mauretania in 867. Massena, by this point a man advanced in age, would nonetheless keep the muslims at bay for some two decades, even causing them to retreat back across the old border for several years after a string of glorious victories in 879. Of course it all ended when Massena, aged seventy-nine, died of natural causes in his capital of Tingi, where he had been intermittenly based during the wars, as the old capital of Yol fell, was re-captured, and fell again. The conflict with the Egyptians had put unprecedented strain on his kingdom, and he had largely lost the ability to maintain authority among the many subservient states that he had conquered. His reign was followed by a decade of civil war as a number of upstart dukes, chieftains and others tried to seize the kingship, only for it to eventually be won by his eldest grandson, half Berber and half Roman, Johannes I. Both the dukes of Spania and the Masmuda tribes simply neglected to recognise this new sovereign. While much territory was lost, the dynasty prevailed and survived, and the Sahmids would eventually be satisified with their conquests and become distracted by other theatres.