CHAPTER 1.XXIX: The Treaty of Metz
Excerpt: Phransiya – Akllasumaq Kichka, Quitu Scholastic Press (AD 1982)
As the immediate shock after the death of Lothair III started to fade away with a new order solemnly put in place, questions arose within clerical circles whether or not the Roman Empire has now ended. Each regnum has now elected – or was forced to elect – its own king from their own pool of resources, and while at least Lothair III’s oldest son Charles II desired some restoration of the whole empire under his thumb, but the only realm which would ever at least be partially controlled by him was Italy. As Neustria was the sole non-Carolingian kingdom to arise from the collapse of the Empire and only the magnates of the other regna ever formally recognized his authority, tensions were brewing regarding the borders of the aforementioned subkingdom.
Dissatisfaction grew over the Frankish Western border where Lotharingian counties and duchies paid homage to the Widonids, the Babenberger, or none at all, not to mention the various skirmishes and incursions conducted by Neustrian nobles on behalf of Adalhard I into the Aquitanian realm.
Due to their shared interest in consolidating their newfound powers and fortifying their position against internal and external strife, in 950 AD, a Burgundian delegation was sent to the court of Adalhard I of Neustria to bring him to the negotiation table to settle the various border disputes and to end the annual raids conducted by Adalhard I and his Norman mercenaries.
Thus, in the evening of a day in Spring 951 AD, Adalhard I of Neustria and Louis III of Aquitania met in Mâcon, the place where Louis III’s distant ancestor Louis the German was defeated which led to the end of Frankish expansionist efforts into Aquitania and Lotharingia almost a century ago. This important place was most likely chosen on purpose which served as a warning to the interests of the Babenberger-Carolingians of Francia who eyed for the expansion of their immediate sphere of influence into these rich lands. Adalhard I himself came under pressure within his kingdom as well, with an, admittedly unsuccessful, uprising caused by pro-Carolingian Earl William Lackland of Normandy who, in accordance to Treaty of Chartres, was banished into exile with Adalhard I installing his second son Lambert as the Duke of Normandy [1]. The negotiations of the Treaty of Mâcon were not long, but certainly impactful. Louis III chose to betray the political stances shared by his brothers Charles II of Italy and Henry I of Francia and recognized that a non-Carolingian king is ruling over a former Carolingian regnum. This directly clashes with the immediate interests of Charles II who is keen on at least ensuring that the dissolving empire remains in Carolingian hands and the interests of boy-king Henry I and his supervisors who fear the potential loss of Lotharingia to the Widonids. Nonetheless, the treaty was signed and a large banquet at the cost of Adalhard I and the confiscated treasures of William Lackland was held which would be remembered in history for its “excessive degeneracy” as noted by the, quite frankly put, very biased accounts of Frankish chroniclers.
Another treaty would be set in motion by Pope Benedict IV and his successor Pope John XI, another member of the scheming Giacomii of Rome whose influence on the affairs of Lateran only continued to grow under the inability of Charles II to intervene in episcopal affairs, as an immediate result of the Concordat of Ravenna at the end of the Ravenna Dispute. In this proposed treaty outlined by none other than Aicone II of Milan together with his friend and pen pal Bishop Egon of Würzburg, an illegitimate son of Duke Adalbert I of Franconia, the division of the Frankish Empire should have been formalized, and with mutual exchanges of oaths to protect each other in the case of domestic strife or an attack on Christendom by the Norse heathens or Mohammedan Saracens. While initially disinterested in formalizing the end of the Carolingian Empire, Charles II would be swayed by Aicone II who outlined that the imperial title would still be one just as the church is one, and that the Frankish would still be united in purpose, lineage, and faith. Although the arguments of Aicone II only arose during the course of the XVth century as chroniclers tried to justify their contemporary state of the church, it is not unlikely that the bishop did in the end sway the opinion of Charles II regarding the state of the empire. As for Pope John XI, as the Giocomii increasingly distrusted Charles II, his primary interest was to weaken the emperor to a degree where the pontiff is once again able to exert political influence without imperial intervention.
Therefore, as interests intertwined and overlapped, embassies started being exchanged throughout the four kingdoms. Afterward, the clergy, on behalf of Pope Benedict IV, started to mediate some disputes between the various kings, dukes, and counts in order to reach an at least passable outcome for those negotiations. But in the end, the positions of Charles II, Adalhard I of Neustria, and Henry I of Francia, of whom everyone could not agree on their respective claims on the inheritance of the dead emperor Lothair III, proved to be irreconcilable. There were long-lasting negotiations, accompanied by the usual mutual distrust in the tense political climate, in the course of which the empire was inventoried.
But sooner or later a weak consensus was reached; it was agreed upon that the Treaty of Liège of 856 AD, a treaty almost a century old and already partially forgotten, should become the basis of the division, which took place under the aspects of the equivalence of the geographical-political situation and the economic yield. The preliminary negotiations came to an end from October 12 to 24, 951, when 210 emissaries of the three imperial brothers and Adalhard I met in the Aachen Cathedral, the place which was erected as the nominal seat of the early Carolingian Empire. The four kings published the result of these preliminary negotiations the following month at a meeting in Metz. The exact wording of the contract has not survived. Either it was never written down or the certificate was lost over time. Either way, the essential content can be reconstructed from contemporary sources.
The Annals of St. Gallen, for example, reported the following:
“When the empire was taken up by the nobles and divided into four parts, Charles went to meet the brothers and met them in Metz. Here, after the division was carried out, Henry received everything beyond the Rhine, plus the towns and districts of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz on this side; Adalhard the land between the Rhine and the Sea and then until the land around Borges, Burgundy, the Breton area; (south of it) Louis shall reign with his kingship carried around the counties to the left of the Loire and further until the influence of the Saône in the Rhone, and along the Rhone to the sea with counties on both sides. Outside of these limits, Louis got Arras through the kindness of his brother Charles. The rest up to Spain fell to Louis. Charles was to carry the imperial title and the lands of Italy. And after that, they swore mutual oaths, and when they had made peace and reaffirmed it by an oath against an oath, they went home to secure and arrange their part for everyone. Charles, who claimed Italy because it belonged to his empire by law, became a nuisance to the local lords and the pontiff by plaguing them with numerous taxes, but often suffering great losses in his own army from incursions of those disgruntled [...].”
But even the contemporary sources didn’t leave behind uniform testimonies, particularly over the matter of Lotharingia and its allegiance. In the last known pages of the East Frankish Annales Fuldenses, for example, it states:
“And Henry as descendant of the lineage of Charles Magnus was also given the lands of Lothair between the Rhine and Scheldt to its mouth and then the land around Cambrai, the Hainaut, the Lomonic between Meuse and Sombre and Castrician area (south of it) and the counties to the left of the Meuse and further until the influence of the Saône and the lands around Mâcon.”
This passage directly contradicts those of the Annals of St. Gallen, according to which Adalhard I was given control over Lotharingia. Here, not many sources seem to have survived the ages, but it is generally accepted that many counts and dukes of the area swore their allegiance to the king from whom they could profit the most, in particular Duke Herbert I of Upper Lorraine who chose to align himself with Neustrian interests, perhaps fearing that his possessions and powers might be confiscated by the powerful magnates of Francia, and Duke Adolf I of Lower Lorraine choosing, probably because of his dynastic possessions in Keldachgau, Deutzgau and Auelgau and his continued to support of the archbishopric of Cologne, Francia. Indeed, it seems that the most problematic questions such as Lotharingia and the general border region of Aquitania and Neustria were never truly answered nor was ever agreed upon a status quo, both of which would serve as the basis for future conflicts between the three kingdoms. Only on the extent of the Kingdom of Italy, surrounded by the Alps and the Mediterranean in every cardinal direction seemed to have been easy to decide on, but even here, many essential decisions seem to have been not done to not anger the various delegations. The important Alpine passes of St. Gotthard and St. Bernhard, the most known passes serve as the link between Francia and Italy, but despite all of this, conflicting documents arose over-taxation of incoming and outcoming traffic on both sides, with Francia seeming to have laid claim on the entire passage while Charles II seems to have exerted at least nominal control over it.
But despite all the confusion and disappointment following the Treaty of Metz, the kings tried, at least nominally and ideally, to maintain imperial unity by striving for similar economic and domestic policies and emphasizing the cohesion of Christendom, with the support of the Clerics. Nonetheless, the empire was, outside of Italy, rarely viewed as a single unit, and definitely not part of a shared single Carolingian territory in opposition to what has been felt after the Battle of Fontenoy and the Treaty of Liège. Therefore, the Treaty of Metz should be and almost always has been viewed as the final division of the empire, a total collapse of centralized power over all of Western and Central Europe. Although the Treaty of Metz wouldn't be the last treaty regarding the extent of the individual kingdoms, as the treaty will be modified or revised by the different parties in order to reflect the changing political landscapes, especially considering Lotharingia, it served as the foundation of these modifications. After this treaty, the area would never again see permanent reunification.
That the empire finally collapsed was not officially noted in any of the contemporary sources, although most contemporaries most likely agreed that the age of the Carolingian hegemony was over. And with unresolved questions over Lotharingia, the powers of the imperial title in Italy, the limited influence of some of the post-Lotharian kings over the increasingly completely feudalized society and various other political, economic, and cultural issues, new brutal conflicts and wars were inevitable. For this was the beginning of a new age for Europe, the prelude to what will be known as the High Medieval Period.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Gone, but not forgotten. He will become important somewhere else.
[2] It has been done. One century after the initial PoD, the empire breaks apart. For those who believed that this timeline will continue with a Charlemagne-esque figure being able to hold onto such vast stretches of lands forgets that the empire was pretty much dead as soon as Louis the Pious passed away with the various kings and magnates having failed to agree to a common ground on which their ambitions are to be settled. Regionalism, ambitions and plots within the aristocracy, Vikings, Saracens, Magyars, changes in climate, and a subsequent decline in trade have burdened the empire ITTL and IOTL, which can't be changed with the initial PoD and its butterflies. This timeline's "collapse" wasn't as chaotic as the one of our timeline, since we had more Carolingian kings to play with, but the dissolution of the empire was to be expected with the death of Lothair III and the failure of Charles II, who serves as some kind of recurring Lothair I, to reunite the empire. This timeline, unlike our one, has the advantage of the Carolingian Dynasty still sticking around, although, as we've seen with Neustria, this too can and will change.
In all honesty, this timeline was not supposed to be a Carolingian/Frankish Wank, otherwise, I would have chosen an earlier PoD in which I could have been able to prevent factionalism and oftentimes lacking interregional trade and diplomacy, such as the Battle of Fontenoy in 841 AD. I hope you understand why this was almost inevitable. As a spoiler for the next few entries, I'm trying to flesh out what has been happening in al-Andalus and the Byzantine Empire next, so expect some time-jumps between the entries. Thanks for sticking with the timeline for a century after the initial PoD, it has been a fun ride so far - so here's to the next century!
As the immediate shock after the death of Lothair III started to fade away with a new order solemnly put in place, questions arose within clerical circles whether or not the Roman Empire has now ended. Each regnum has now elected – or was forced to elect – its own king from their own pool of resources, and while at least Lothair III’s oldest son Charles II desired some restoration of the whole empire under his thumb, but the only realm which would ever at least be partially controlled by him was Italy. As Neustria was the sole non-Carolingian kingdom to arise from the collapse of the Empire and only the magnates of the other regna ever formally recognized his authority, tensions were brewing regarding the borders of the aforementioned subkingdom.
Dissatisfaction grew over the Frankish Western border where Lotharingian counties and duchies paid homage to the Widonids, the Babenberger, or none at all, not to mention the various skirmishes and incursions conducted by Neustrian nobles on behalf of Adalhard I into the Aquitanian realm.
Due to their shared interest in consolidating their newfound powers and fortifying their position against internal and external strife, in 950 AD, a Burgundian delegation was sent to the court of Adalhard I of Neustria to bring him to the negotiation table to settle the various border disputes and to end the annual raids conducted by Adalhard I and his Norman mercenaries.
Thus, in the evening of a day in Spring 951 AD, Adalhard I of Neustria and Louis III of Aquitania met in Mâcon, the place where Louis III’s distant ancestor Louis the German was defeated which led to the end of Frankish expansionist efforts into Aquitania and Lotharingia almost a century ago. This important place was most likely chosen on purpose which served as a warning to the interests of the Babenberger-Carolingians of Francia who eyed for the expansion of their immediate sphere of influence into these rich lands. Adalhard I himself came under pressure within his kingdom as well, with an, admittedly unsuccessful, uprising caused by pro-Carolingian Earl William Lackland of Normandy who, in accordance to Treaty of Chartres, was banished into exile with Adalhard I installing his second son Lambert as the Duke of Normandy [1]. The negotiations of the Treaty of Mâcon were not long, but certainly impactful. Louis III chose to betray the political stances shared by his brothers Charles II of Italy and Henry I of Francia and recognized that a non-Carolingian king is ruling over a former Carolingian regnum. This directly clashes with the immediate interests of Charles II who is keen on at least ensuring that the dissolving empire remains in Carolingian hands and the interests of boy-king Henry I and his supervisors who fear the potential loss of Lotharingia to the Widonids. Nonetheless, the treaty was signed and a large banquet at the cost of Adalhard I and the confiscated treasures of William Lackland was held which would be remembered in history for its “excessive degeneracy” as noted by the, quite frankly put, very biased accounts of Frankish chroniclers.
Another treaty would be set in motion by Pope Benedict IV and his successor Pope John XI, another member of the scheming Giacomii of Rome whose influence on the affairs of Lateran only continued to grow under the inability of Charles II to intervene in episcopal affairs, as an immediate result of the Concordat of Ravenna at the end of the Ravenna Dispute. In this proposed treaty outlined by none other than Aicone II of Milan together with his friend and pen pal Bishop Egon of Würzburg, an illegitimate son of Duke Adalbert I of Franconia, the division of the Frankish Empire should have been formalized, and with mutual exchanges of oaths to protect each other in the case of domestic strife or an attack on Christendom by the Norse heathens or Mohammedan Saracens. While initially disinterested in formalizing the end of the Carolingian Empire, Charles II would be swayed by Aicone II who outlined that the imperial title would still be one just as the church is one, and that the Frankish would still be united in purpose, lineage, and faith. Although the arguments of Aicone II only arose during the course of the XVth century as chroniclers tried to justify their contemporary state of the church, it is not unlikely that the bishop did in the end sway the opinion of Charles II regarding the state of the empire. As for Pope John XI, as the Giocomii increasingly distrusted Charles II, his primary interest was to weaken the emperor to a degree where the pontiff is once again able to exert political influence without imperial intervention.
Therefore, as interests intertwined and overlapped, embassies started being exchanged throughout the four kingdoms. Afterward, the clergy, on behalf of Pope Benedict IV, started to mediate some disputes between the various kings, dukes, and counts in order to reach an at least passable outcome for those negotiations. But in the end, the positions of Charles II, Adalhard I of Neustria, and Henry I of Francia, of whom everyone could not agree on their respective claims on the inheritance of the dead emperor Lothair III, proved to be irreconcilable. There were long-lasting negotiations, accompanied by the usual mutual distrust in the tense political climate, in the course of which the empire was inventoried.
But sooner or later a weak consensus was reached; it was agreed upon that the Treaty of Liège of 856 AD, a treaty almost a century old and already partially forgotten, should become the basis of the division, which took place under the aspects of the equivalence of the geographical-political situation and the economic yield. The preliminary negotiations came to an end from October 12 to 24, 951, when 210 emissaries of the three imperial brothers and Adalhard I met in the Aachen Cathedral, the place which was erected as the nominal seat of the early Carolingian Empire. The four kings published the result of these preliminary negotiations the following month at a meeting in Metz. The exact wording of the contract has not survived. Either it was never written down or the certificate was lost over time. Either way, the essential content can be reconstructed from contemporary sources.
The Annals of St. Gallen, for example, reported the following:
“When the empire was taken up by the nobles and divided into four parts, Charles went to meet the brothers and met them in Metz. Here, after the division was carried out, Henry received everything beyond the Rhine, plus the towns and districts of Speyer, Worms, and Mainz on this side; Adalhard the land between the Rhine and the Sea and then until the land around Borges, Burgundy, the Breton area; (south of it) Louis shall reign with his kingship carried around the counties to the left of the Loire and further until the influence of the Saône in the Rhone, and along the Rhone to the sea with counties on both sides. Outside of these limits, Louis got Arras through the kindness of his brother Charles. The rest up to Spain fell to Louis. Charles was to carry the imperial title and the lands of Italy. And after that, they swore mutual oaths, and when they had made peace and reaffirmed it by an oath against an oath, they went home to secure and arrange their part for everyone. Charles, who claimed Italy because it belonged to his empire by law, became a nuisance to the local lords and the pontiff by plaguing them with numerous taxes, but often suffering great losses in his own army from incursions of those disgruntled [...].”
But even the contemporary sources didn’t leave behind uniform testimonies, particularly over the matter of Lotharingia and its allegiance. In the last known pages of the East Frankish Annales Fuldenses, for example, it states:
“And Henry as descendant of the lineage of Charles Magnus was also given the lands of Lothair between the Rhine and Scheldt to its mouth and then the land around Cambrai, the Hainaut, the Lomonic between Meuse and Sombre and Castrician area (south of it) and the counties to the left of the Meuse and further until the influence of the Saône and the lands around Mâcon.”
This passage directly contradicts those of the Annals of St. Gallen, according to which Adalhard I was given control over Lotharingia. Here, not many sources seem to have survived the ages, but it is generally accepted that many counts and dukes of the area swore their allegiance to the king from whom they could profit the most, in particular Duke Herbert I of Upper Lorraine who chose to align himself with Neustrian interests, perhaps fearing that his possessions and powers might be confiscated by the powerful magnates of Francia, and Duke Adolf I of Lower Lorraine choosing, probably because of his dynastic possessions in Keldachgau, Deutzgau and Auelgau and his continued to support of the archbishopric of Cologne, Francia. Indeed, it seems that the most problematic questions such as Lotharingia and the general border region of Aquitania and Neustria were never truly answered nor was ever agreed upon a status quo, both of which would serve as the basis for future conflicts between the three kingdoms. Only on the extent of the Kingdom of Italy, surrounded by the Alps and the Mediterranean in every cardinal direction seemed to have been easy to decide on, but even here, many essential decisions seem to have been not done to not anger the various delegations. The important Alpine passes of St. Gotthard and St. Bernhard, the most known passes serve as the link between Francia and Italy, but despite all of this, conflicting documents arose over-taxation of incoming and outcoming traffic on both sides, with Francia seeming to have laid claim on the entire passage while Charles II seems to have exerted at least nominal control over it.
But despite all the confusion and disappointment following the Treaty of Metz, the kings tried, at least nominally and ideally, to maintain imperial unity by striving for similar economic and domestic policies and emphasizing the cohesion of Christendom, with the support of the Clerics. Nonetheless, the empire was, outside of Italy, rarely viewed as a single unit, and definitely not part of a shared single Carolingian territory in opposition to what has been felt after the Battle of Fontenoy and the Treaty of Liège. Therefore, the Treaty of Metz should be and almost always has been viewed as the final division of the empire, a total collapse of centralized power over all of Western and Central Europe. Although the Treaty of Metz wouldn't be the last treaty regarding the extent of the individual kingdoms, as the treaty will be modified or revised by the different parties in order to reflect the changing political landscapes, especially considering Lotharingia, it served as the foundation of these modifications. After this treaty, the area would never again see permanent reunification.
That the empire finally collapsed was not officially noted in any of the contemporary sources, although most contemporaries most likely agreed that the age of the Carolingian hegemony was over. And with unresolved questions over Lotharingia, the powers of the imperial title in Italy, the limited influence of some of the post-Lotharian kings over the increasingly completely feudalized society and various other political, economic, and cultural issues, new brutal conflicts and wars were inevitable. For this was the beginning of a new age for Europe, the prelude to what will be known as the High Medieval Period.
SUMMARY:
951: The Treaty of Metz. The Carolingian Empire is semi-officially dissolved. [2]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Gone, but not forgotten. He will become important somewhere else.
[2] It has been done. One century after the initial PoD, the empire breaks apart. For those who believed that this timeline will continue with a Charlemagne-esque figure being able to hold onto such vast stretches of lands forgets that the empire was pretty much dead as soon as Louis the Pious passed away with the various kings and magnates having failed to agree to a common ground on which their ambitions are to be settled. Regionalism, ambitions and plots within the aristocracy, Vikings, Saracens, Magyars, changes in climate, and a subsequent decline in trade have burdened the empire ITTL and IOTL, which can't be changed with the initial PoD and its butterflies. This timeline's "collapse" wasn't as chaotic as the one of our timeline, since we had more Carolingian kings to play with, but the dissolution of the empire was to be expected with the death of Lothair III and the failure of Charles II, who serves as some kind of recurring Lothair I, to reunite the empire. This timeline, unlike our one, has the advantage of the Carolingian Dynasty still sticking around, although, as we've seen with Neustria, this too can and will change.
In all honesty, this timeline was not supposed to be a Carolingian/Frankish Wank, otherwise, I would have chosen an earlier PoD in which I could have been able to prevent factionalism and oftentimes lacking interregional trade and diplomacy, such as the Battle of Fontenoy in 841 AD. I hope you understand why this was almost inevitable. As a spoiler for the next few entries, I'm trying to flesh out what has been happening in al-Andalus and the Byzantine Empire next, so expect some time-jumps between the entries. Thanks for sticking with the timeline for a century after the initial PoD, it has been a fun ride so far - so here's to the next century!
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