How could France stay balkanized?

During the 1300-1400s, there were many little states in France, including Burgundy, Provence, and Brittany. Of course, many of them were destined to be gobbled up by France, which mostly unified present-day France, save areas lost at Vienna 1815, when the French Revolution broke out.

It's quite interesting, to speculate. How could the countries which called the area of present-day France home, stay independent, with either a vastly weakened rump France, or with no France to speak of at all?
 
off the top of my head and without looking up anything, there could conceivably be a probably small Muslim state along the Pyrenees, Burgundy could persist, the English retain at least Normandy, and by being geographically divided the remaining de jure parts of France could become de facto independent of each other. you could also throw in regions controlled by the Habsburgs and/or the Holy Roman Empire for good measure.
 
During the 1300-1400s, there were many little states in France, including Burgundy, Provence, and Brittany. Of course, many of them were destined to be gobbled up by France, which mostly unified present-day France, save areas lost at Vienna 1815, when the French Revolution broke out.

It's quite interesting, to speculate. How could the countries which called the area of present-day France home, stay independent, with either a vastly weakened rump France, or with no France to speak of at all?

kill off the Capets early. keep Occitan France separate/unite it with Aragon. wank the Bretons. wank Navarre.
 
prevent the Albigensian Crusade, it weakened Aragon and forced Toulouse into the sphere of the kingdom of France.
 
Try and get Eleanor of Acquitaine married to the Count of Toulouse instead of Henry II. That way Acquitaine is stronger and uninvolved in any Anglo-French wars. This also butterflies away King John, so hopefully Philip II is never able to take Normandy and Anjou.
 
The Albigensian crusade or a marriage between the heirs of the duchy of Aquitaine and of the county of Toulouse will change nothing to it.

The duchy of Aquitaine always was very weak. Aquitaine was much more a geographic expression than a political one. The dukes had not performed the kind of work of centralization at the expense of the local nobility that was performed by the dukes of Normandy or of Burgundy, and the counts of Flanders or elsewhere.

The point is that the kingdom of France was potentially the superpower of western christendom because it was by far the most populated than any other country in western and central Europe and had the best conditions for agriculture. And the french king Philip Augustus succeeded in turning this potential into a reality to the benefit of the kings of France in the years 1204/1207, and definitely secured it in 1214 when he defeated the anglo-imperial coalition at Bouvines and La Roche aux moines.

And this new situation was founded on so deep and solid bases that it lasted 6 centuries, until a coalition of all Europe brought France down and until the coming of the industrial age changed the economic balance of powers in favour of Britain and Germany that were full of iron and coal while France relatively lacked iron and coal.

Albigensian crusade or not, the king of France is going to curb the county of Toulouse into a closer submission. He is going to organize a marriage that will give him a chance of integrating this county into the royal demesne because it was what Capetians had always been doing. Same thing for Aquitaine or Britanny.

If the french king is and remains as powerful as Philip Augustus made it, then it is very highly probable that France turns the way it did. Even the coalition of Lancastrian England and Burgundian Prince Philip the good, and an almost total collapse of the royal french system of government could not overcome the strength intrinsic stregth of the french kingdom.


If you want to balkanize the territory known as the medieval kingdom of France, then you need to have Philip Augustus fail.
 
as I said, KILL THE CAPETS!

that dynasty wasn't known as the House of France for nothing.

The dynasty, which will replace them will eventually also be known as such.

For instance the not directly related ruling dynasties in Austria & Styria, the houses of Babenberg and later Habsburg were both known (and also self styled) as the house of Austria.

Anyway the Capetians don't need to demise, but it's not impossible that the large vassals, Burgundy, Aquitaine, Normandy, Flanders, Toulouse, Champagne, Anjou etc. manage to keep a degree of autonomy. ITTL France will look more like OTL Holy Roman Empire.
 
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The dynasty, which will eventually replace them will eventually also be known as such.

For instance the not directly related ruling dynasties in Austria & Styria, the houses of Babenberg and later Habsburg were both know (and also self styled) as the house of Austria.

Anyway the Capetians don't need to demise, but it's not impossible that the large vassals, Burgundy, Aquitaine, Normandy, Flanders, Toulouse, Champagne, Anjou etc. manage to keep a degree of autonomy. ITTL France will look more like OTL Holy Roman Empire.

True. We just need the demise of a particular Capet, which would be Philip Augustus, as said above. He was the king who put France on the road to centralization.
 
True. We just need the demise of a particular Capet, which would be Philip Augustus, as said above. He was the king who put France on the road to centralization.

He was not the first one who put France on the road to centralization. But he made dramatic huge increases of royal centralization and power. There really was a before and an after Philip Augustus and these few years of the early 13th century.

Philip Augustus also had a good model who had been set by Henry II Plantagenet. Most of what the kings of France did had already been done in England in the 12th century under Henry II.

And Philip Augustus also had good advisors. He did not invent it all on his own. Most the work was devised by his advisors, who were following the same trend as their predecessors under the previous kings of France.
 
During the 1300-1400s, there were many little states in France, including Burgundy, Provence, and Brittany.
Which weren't exactly "little states" at this point. By the XIIth century, the royal hegemony over France was established.
Hegemony doesn't mean, of course, direct domination. But it was unquestionably the king that was the most important political force of the kingdom.

Even these feudal states had to acknowledge this, and would it be only trough sheer political interest (but as well, trough a whole ideology that made them inclinded to do so*) act in this sense.
These entities, safe in very precise context in Late MA, never went against (or at least openly) this royal hegemony but merely wanted to either be part of this influence (Armagnacs after the HYW) or to be left alone (Brittany).

This is to be stressed : they weren't, even from the start, independents. They were largely autonomous, up to the point not having to care with royal decisions, BUT were still tied up to vassality structures.

It wasn't just a question of formalism : not only denying it would have lead to deligitimize themselves (their power was issued from royal decision, at least symbolically**) but to let their own vassals free to do the same with you.
It became more and more irrelevant in the Late MA, because of the bureaucratisation and unification of feudal entities but at this point, royal hegemony did became royal domination in France.

*Medieval ideologies are for some kind of reason, totally ignored when it come to political structures on this board.
** And for anyone that knows about the strength of symbol in medieval society, that means a lot.


kill off the Capets early. keep Occitan France separate/unite it with Aragon. wank the Bretons. wank Navarre.
prevent the Albigensian Crusade, it weakened Aragon and forced Toulouse into the sphere of the kingdom of France.
Try and get Eleanor of Acquitaine married to the Count of Toulouse instead of Henry II.

I'm afriad that I have to disagree, strongly, with this. Allow me to explain why.

First, I don't think you really have a good idea about how southern France looked like politically. It was a mess of principalties, themselves desintegrated into smaller entities, etc. You didn't have any Occitan (which is, historically, defined by Capetian politics, in order to distinguish their demesnes in Languedoc from Aquitaine. Occitan means exactly this, Languedoc, "Òclanguage") identity.

The Count of Toulouse had barely any power in Albi, for exemple, while it was a viscounty of them. Merging two particularly desintegrated principalities is not going to help : at best it would make the situation unchanged, at worst it would make it even more chaotic.
Or Trencavel plundering Besièrs decade after Crusaders did so, because the count was murdered by urban patricianship.

Heck, after the revolution of 1189, Toulouse itself was basically akin to contemporary Italian city-states.

Then this mess was a hive for perpetual wars. I mentioned earlier you didn't have any Occitan identity politically-wise. Basically, it was a HYW with 4 players : Aquitaine/Plantageners, Toulouse, Trencavel and Barcelone/Aragon, and so at least since the War of Succession of Aquitaine in the Xth.

Not only strategic matrimonial alliances aren't a CKII-like feature that can happen between anyone for no good reason, but even when it happened IOTL, it never went trough a pacification of the region.

It was why Toulouse entered within Capetian sphere much before the Crusade : Raimond V married a Capetian princess, and beneficied from royal support against Henry II's ambitions on the county (that were directly issued from Aquitain ones).

In order to strengthen the region, you'll need to go as far back than Carolingian period, maybe Late Carolingian period. After the death of Acfred of Aquitaine***, and the end of Guilhemid line, it only went downhill as for political unity.

***I'd even say that you'd have to work with William I having sons

Anyway.

In order to "balkanize" France as much as possible in the XIVth/XVth century, you'd need to butterfly away Lancastrian conquests. It seems a bit weird, but it would have allowed the reinforcement of principalties as Bourgogne, Brittany, Foix, Armagnac, etc; while the war forced Valois to undergo a fiscal, military, administrative and eventually political unification.

Let's be straight : even at this point, these principalties acted not independently as if there were no supreme political power, but more as landed factions. Still, their survival *could* make France looking a bit more as HRE.

The Orléans/Armagnac - Bourguignon civil war, after all, was not a nobiliar war, but a civil war with nobles or population siding with one or the other (Paris was a famous Bourguignon city, while not Burgundian territorialy or politically)

Eventually, with a continued apanage policy, with Valois unable to retrive all of them or unable to fully enforce their rule (IOTL, these lands were pretty much under royal scrutiny. But in an ATL were it's more chaotic, you could see attempt à la Louis XI when he was dauphin, and apanagiers nobles gaining more autonomy.

I doubt it would remain like that even IATL with a PoD in the XIVth/XVth century. In fact, I'm kind of skeptical it will.
But it would be a good step for having more political autonomy lasting ITTL up to nowadays.

But if you want no France at all...Giving that unifications trends date as back as the Merovingian Era, you'd need a Late Antiquity PoD.
 
A rather 'minor' balkanization involves Charles the Bold of Burgundy simply being much more like his father - I.E. a pretty awesome ruler who had a proper male heir.

If that happens, carving off Burgundy/Picardie/Lorraine? may be quite doable, thereby also giving a small chance to Brittany.

Still, that's pretty minor - the other princes had mostly fallen, and no smart-enough ruler was gonna give them a new breath of life through something like the Ligue du Bien Public (which was a seeming victory, but apparently long-term just a way to decisively piss off France without gaining anything).

The only real shattering of a kingdom in the period, the HRE, took a long and almost scary continuation of failures. A king or two more devoted to Italy/Sicily than Germany (not gonna happen with the English, who will probably hop over if they get significant power in France), followed by a long period of unclarity in the succession rotating around, and even then the Habsburgs almost resurrected it before the 30YW finally shattered it.

So, as a beginning: kill Philip Augustus and all his male heirs. Probably kill the Plantagenets too (or birth 5 more...) to ensure they can't waltz in from Aquitaine/Normandy/Anjou. Some noble or another will rise to be recognized as king, but Flandres and Brittany might start to drift off. Say an Aquitanian, so Lorraine/Burgundy have a boost to their Imperial focus.

Then, when this new dynasty gets going, have the black death hit and split the family between two rival claimants for a few years (maybe add some English intervention for fun). Have the duchy of Burgundy inherited by an Imperial vassal in this period, who can go on to ignore both Emperor and King.

Finally, get some ambitious but slightly too weak King to make a play for reasserting authority, resulting in a Burgundy-Lorraine/Champagne?-Brittany-Paris-Flandres vs King kind of conflict that gets supported by English, Iberian and Italian powers and results in a final reduction of the King to just a nominal title.

Oh, and in all this time, you can't have an actual set of competent kings of France in a row, unless all their foes are at least as good.
 
Wasn't France an elective monarchy, albeit with the ruling monarch generally having their heir elected in their own lifetime to secure the succession, for a fair while with the Peers of France being the Electors? No idea how but if you could avoid a run of monarchs from the same family and/or get the Electors to successfully resist any moves towards a hereditary monarchy then it could perhaps develop along the lines of the Holy Roman Empire.
 
Aquitaine could survive and replace Ile-De-France as the main French state.England could take over Brittany and Normandy.Andorra may be taken over by a Spanish state.
 
Wasn't France an elective monarchy
Only formally.
You didn't had real opposition to de facto hereditary succession. Don't get me wrong, the elective rite (it was heavily formalized and ritualized, part of the coronation ceremony) was important and formal doesn't mean superficial. But it was not an elective monarchy in the modern sense.

The elective principle was essentially real in time of crises, and general weariness of royal lines : the dynastical (rather than hereditary) principle was too well established.

for a fair while with the Peers of France being the Electors?
It was less systematized than that.
Basically, the election rite involved (according the account of Philippe I's election in 1059, during his father's reign) first the archbishop of Reims (a lecture of the royal duties), apostolic legates (non necessary but always helpful), "archbishops, bishops, clergy" then various great nobles (which weren't all pairs*, and not all pairs were there), then small nobles and "populous".

It admittedly changed in the late XIIth century to include all the pairs with the coronation of Philippe II. But at this point it became a de jure hereditary succession, and the fixation of peerage is posterior to the elective rite.

* Or rather, as fixed peerage appeared later, weren't always nobles whom titles became associated with peerage.

You had less of a real elections between various candidates than a succession rite, planned in advance.

then it could perhaps develop along the lines of the Holy Roman Empire.
HRE Electors themselves didn't played that of a role until successive dynastical failures. Ottonians or Salians never really had to undergo real elections when their rule was established; and the formalisation of the Golden Bull only appears much later.

Aquitaine could survive and replace Ile-De-France as the main French state.
Unlikely. Too much politically desintegrated and too far from French centers (Carolingian palaces, traditional capitals, important bishopries). It could get distinct from France, but hardly becoming its center without some major and really early changes.

England could take over Brittany and Normandy.
Depends on which period. Before the XIIIth, while you had a Plantagenet dominance over both England and, say Normandy, they remained fairly distinct from each other on several matters (as other Angevine holdings). It's why the revolt of Henry II' sons managed to be that successful.

After the XIIIth century, a full-fledged conquest during the HYW is largely doable, as it happened with Aquitaine. But for similar reasons Aquitaine was eventually lost, I doubt it would really last.
 
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