ACT II Part IX: Forever Young - Adalbert of the Franks
Planet of Hats
Donor
Excerpt: Lives of Medieval Andalus: Tracing the Footsteps of the Western Caliphs - 'Amr Saadeddine, Falconbird Press, 1427 (2006)
In the wake of the capture of Viguera, the Aquitanian-Andalusian War stalled out into a grinding, ugly conflict consisting mostly of violent raids back and forth through the Ebro Valley and the western foothills of the Pyrenees. While the army of Al-Muntasir came to the fight with strong numbers and a solid core of elite soldiers, the combined Aquitanian-Pamplonan troops seemingly proved a fair match and boasted better knowledge of the terrain, enabling them to defend their territory adequately.
With the fall of Viguera, Count Fernan II of Castile waded into the war, perhaps drawn by familial ties: His sister, Muniadona, was the wife of the Vigueran kinglet, who himself had fallen into the hands of the Andalusians. While histories from the period are somewhat fragmentary and unclear on the details - the best source remains Palm of the West, whose writer was not a military man and wasn't present for any of the battles - it appears that al-Muntasir and his army were attempting to reduce Logrono when a body of Castilians crossed the Duero elsewhere and attacked the settlement at Abejar before continuing on to Soria, where they came up against a group of Berber horsemen riding north to reinforce al-Muntasir and ground to a stalemate.
The delays seem to have resulted in al-Muntasir - who must have received a messenger with these tidings - choosing not to push his luck. The Muslim army withdrew to begin reinforcing Viguera, only for the Aquitanian and Pamplonan forces to follow them and besiege the city, aiming to retake it. For a time it seems that al-Muntasir himself was trapped within the city along with his retinue of Saqaliba cavalry, but the siege was eventually broken, one source reporting that "the Franks' wagons were put to the flame." More than likely al-Muntasir owes the relieving of Viguera to Berber irregulars torching the Pamplonan-Aquitanian supply trains and forcing the army to retreat and regroup.
With a solid hold on the Iregua valley and much of the Ebro valley but facing increasing pressure from raids across the Douro, al-Muntasir seems to have considered again attempting to trade the Vigueran kinglet Sancho II to Queen Sancha of Pamplona in exchange for an end to the hostilities. In any case it does not appear that giving up Viguera crossed his mind, and the region is spoken of in some fragmentary correspondence as "by right a part of the lands of the Muslims," perhaps a reference to the former occupation of the area by the Iberian Muslim dynasty known as the Banu Qasi.
In any case 1028 marks the last mention in history of Sancho II, and of Viguera as an independent kingdom; it seems that most of it became part of the Córdoban Caliphate following the taking of the city, with Muslim rule re-established there. As raids continued over the borders into Pamplona and Castile, al-Muntasir placed the region under the military governorship of Ubaid Allah ibn Usama. This man's origins are somewhat obscure but he seems to have been a fairly successful military man of Arabo-Andalusian stock rather than of Siqlabi background - part of the Arab-descended elite, and thus of a key constituency for al-Muntasir to keep satisfied.
In any case, Ubaid Allah seems to have kept his seat at Viguera, establishing the line of the Usamids as the Umayyads' men on the spot in the western Pyrenees. The decision seems to have rankled the Tujibids of nearby Zaragoza to a degree, but the dispute must have been shoved aside, whether through some promise of al-Muntasir's or through some other agreement.
As 1028 pressed onward, al-Muntasir seems to have elected to focus his offensive attentions largely on Pamplona, with raids on several cities, one apparently coming within sight of Pamplona before being driven off. An answering raid on Washqah[1] resulted in troops from Aquitaine setting fire to much of the town before the Muslim party could drive them off, that raid coming late in the year. The hostilities, however, remained focused in the northeast, in the western Pyrenees; despite the entry of Castile into the war, King Ordono V of Leon seems to have scrupulously kept himself out of the war, focusing mostly on beating down what remained of Galicia and on repelling the occasional raids of Anglish Vikings along his coastline.
The winter of 1029 saw the war between Aquitaine and al-Andalus continue in much this manner - a series of ugly raids across the hazily-defined borders as the war ground to a stalemate. However, the year would prove pivotal, as events transpired to change the course of the war - and for that matter of western Europe.
Already an old man going into the war, Duke William V of Aquitaine, called the Great, took ill over the winter, and word circulated that he was soon to die. Queen Sancha and their son, also named William, traveled to Poitou to join William at his bedside. As the two held vigil over William and left much of the war in the hands of Geoffrey Taillefer, Count of Angoulême, who recognized William as his suzerain, unexpected word arrived from the north in the form of a declaration from the King of West Francia, Adalbert the Young.
Excerpt: Forever Young: Adalbert, King of the Franks - Reinhard Folkner, Barentholtz Books, 2004
It could easily be assumed that Adalbert the Young gained his nickname because he ascended to the throne as a ten-year-old boy. But sources only begin to refer to him this way late in his life, and more broadly after his death, which came later in his life - certainly well past the time when he could have been called young. And artistic depictions of Adalbert depict him as an adult man with a beard and a full head of hair, suggesting that a childlike appearance may not have been the source of his moniker.
What is commonly agreed upon, however, is that a careful reading of contemporary sources paints a picture of Adalbert which runs beyond the often-unflattering portrayal of him in histories rooted in Aquitaine and Toulouse or the ambivalent depictions seen in northern documents. Perhaps the best source for firsthand description of Adalbert not coming from his enemies comes from the account of Hilduin of Sens, a monk from the abbey of Chaumes-en-Brie, who describes him thusly:
"Now the King did preside over them, and he did speaketh little, as was his way, and would meeteth seldom the gazes of his subjects, for it was said that he would not deign to meet the eyes of the commons. And he was accompanied always by one or two manservants who did tend to the matters of his dining, and guideth him always in all things."
Hilduin, who apparently observed Adalbert directly on some few occasions during some manner of visit to Paris on behalf of his order, goes on to describe the King as speaking in very few words frequently stroking his beard. Together with hostile accounts from Aquitaine - particularly a letter from Duke William VI of Aquitaine advising the King to "play rather with thy baubles than mine birthright" - and the fact that he was born when his father was advanced in years, a theory has emerged suggesting that Adalbert may have suffered from some manner of cognitive impairment which resulted in his displaying childlike or simple traits even during adulthood.
The counter-theory is similarly sympathetic: That Adalbert was simply an introspective and well-meaning but ineffective ruler whose boyhood was cut short by the death of his father, Henry I, when Adalbert was just ten. The boy was thrust into the kingship of Francia in a situation where he had never truly been expected to exist. Born to a king widely expected to be a placeholder and accepted as monarch mostly in name, Adalbert exercised almost no power and grew up with most of his nobles having little respect for his authority, and his silence, awkwardness and clumsy efforts to assert the prerogative of the Frankish crown may be understood as the efforts of a man with little power to try and assert himself into a difficult world.[2]
...
In any case, the issue of Aquitaine seems to have vexed Adalbert for years. Though he seemed chronically unable to win the love or respect of his vassals, he was certainly intelligent, and knew that the Dukes of Aquitaine scarcely answered to him as it was. The prospect of a king who was as Basque as he was Aquitanian gaining control over Francia's richest fiefdom would have seriously damaged Adalbert's prospects. He exhorted Duke William V in several letters to divorce Sancha, the Basque Queen of Pamplona, in the hopes of averting what he seems to have known would be an inevitable personal union of Pamplona and Aquitaine under she and William's son, also named William. Adalbert's requests were turned aside with a rebuke from high churchmen within Aquitaine's borders.
As Aquitaine turned its military attention to Muslim Iberia, Adalbert, wrapping up a minor land dispute with the Dukes of Anjou, turned his attention back to the matter of his troublesome southern vassal. While he did not send troops to his vassal's aid, it would seem that he was keeping careful track of the war effort, and particularly on the health of William V.
Adalbert's agenda seems fairly transparent: Knowing that he could probably not win in an outright war against William, given that most of his vassals could not be counted on to support him, Adalbert planned to allow Aquitaine to exhaust itself in a fruitless war against the Andalusians. He allowed the conflict to drag on through 1028, mostly fruitlessly for either side, until early in 1029, when William V emerged from the winter ill and sure to die.
Swiftly, Adalbert dispatched a proclamation to Poitou, arriving with William days from death. The proclamation stated that Adalbert would grant the Duchy of Aquitaine to his son, six-year-old Henry. Such a thing wasn't without precedent: Aquitaine had been granted to the late Hugh Capet by the former king Lothair some decades before the succession crisis of the 980s, and that claim had proven a deep bone of contention between he and William V's father, William IV Fierebras, during the succession dispute.
The declaration drew a hotly-worded response from William VI, accusing Adalbert of breaking the oath between liege and vassal by refusing to come to the aid of Aquitaine in war and declaring that Aquitaine would be his. Shortly after that, the ill William V died, leaving William VI to take the throne at the the tender age of fifteen.
Growing up under the tutelage of the ambitious Queen Sancha, the young William proved to be his mother's son - ambitious, charming and somewhat precocious. While under the control of a regency council, William VI seems to have been fairly assertive even in his teen years - perhaps not brilliant, but charming and with a great deal of drive. Upon his father's death, and no doubt at the prompting of his mother, he arranged a florid coronation ceremony for himself at Poitou, where he was crowned Duke of Aquitaine in defiance of Adalbert's edict. At the same time, in Paris, Adalbert issued another edict proclaiming Henry as Duke of Aquitaine, then mustering an army to settle the issue in the hopes that Aquitaine would be vulnerable after the war in the Pyrenees.
Bolstering Adalbert's hopes was his belief that he had secured the aid of Richard III, the powerful Duke of Normandy.[3] In fact Richard would never deliver on his side of the bargain, believing William to be a more useful ally than Adalbert, and seeing the opportunity to increase his own standing relative to the crown. Adalbert got some help from his vassals, particularly his relatives in Vermandois, but nevertheless came into the dispute with Aquitaine on more of a level playing field than he anticipated, albeit still with what appeared to be an advantage.
The feud over Aquitaine had immediate ramifications in the Pyrenees. The Aquitanian-Andalusian War did not immediately end, but the levies of Aquitaine largely turned and marched home, leaving the brunt of the conflict to be borne by men from Pamplona and Castile. The loss of Aquitanian troops in the south largely allowed Andalusian Caliph al-Muntasir to raid at will, torching Najera in 1029, much to the consternation of Sancha. With William VI engaged in the north, Adalbert's actions unknowingly gave al-Muntasir's war-wracked empire a much-needed chance to catch its breath after years of conflict, with the result that Adalbert is often credited as pivotal in saving Islam in Europe.
[1] Huesca.
[2] There's no way for the historians to know, but ITTL modern medical science would consider Adalbert to be fairly high-functioning autistic - he's extremely smart for a medieval king but struggles somewhat with things like social interaction, people-reading and communication. I make this note largely to emphasize that I don't mean to vilify autism or autism spectrum disorders here. The truth here is that Adalbert is a good man trying to preserve his kingdom even though he's not sure how he can do it or why his vassals hate him so much. Sadly medieval Frankish dukes are somewhat less understanding.
[3] As is tradition, this is a different Richard III. Different sperm = different man.
In the wake of the capture of Viguera, the Aquitanian-Andalusian War stalled out into a grinding, ugly conflict consisting mostly of violent raids back and forth through the Ebro Valley and the western foothills of the Pyrenees. While the army of Al-Muntasir came to the fight with strong numbers and a solid core of elite soldiers, the combined Aquitanian-Pamplonan troops seemingly proved a fair match and boasted better knowledge of the terrain, enabling them to defend their territory adequately.
With the fall of Viguera, Count Fernan II of Castile waded into the war, perhaps drawn by familial ties: His sister, Muniadona, was the wife of the Vigueran kinglet, who himself had fallen into the hands of the Andalusians. While histories from the period are somewhat fragmentary and unclear on the details - the best source remains Palm of the West, whose writer was not a military man and wasn't present for any of the battles - it appears that al-Muntasir and his army were attempting to reduce Logrono when a body of Castilians crossed the Duero elsewhere and attacked the settlement at Abejar before continuing on to Soria, where they came up against a group of Berber horsemen riding north to reinforce al-Muntasir and ground to a stalemate.
The delays seem to have resulted in al-Muntasir - who must have received a messenger with these tidings - choosing not to push his luck. The Muslim army withdrew to begin reinforcing Viguera, only for the Aquitanian and Pamplonan forces to follow them and besiege the city, aiming to retake it. For a time it seems that al-Muntasir himself was trapped within the city along with his retinue of Saqaliba cavalry, but the siege was eventually broken, one source reporting that "the Franks' wagons were put to the flame." More than likely al-Muntasir owes the relieving of Viguera to Berber irregulars torching the Pamplonan-Aquitanian supply trains and forcing the army to retreat and regroup.
With a solid hold on the Iregua valley and much of the Ebro valley but facing increasing pressure from raids across the Douro, al-Muntasir seems to have considered again attempting to trade the Vigueran kinglet Sancho II to Queen Sancha of Pamplona in exchange for an end to the hostilities. In any case it does not appear that giving up Viguera crossed his mind, and the region is spoken of in some fragmentary correspondence as "by right a part of the lands of the Muslims," perhaps a reference to the former occupation of the area by the Iberian Muslim dynasty known as the Banu Qasi.
In any case 1028 marks the last mention in history of Sancho II, and of Viguera as an independent kingdom; it seems that most of it became part of the Córdoban Caliphate following the taking of the city, with Muslim rule re-established there. As raids continued over the borders into Pamplona and Castile, al-Muntasir placed the region under the military governorship of Ubaid Allah ibn Usama. This man's origins are somewhat obscure but he seems to have been a fairly successful military man of Arabo-Andalusian stock rather than of Siqlabi background - part of the Arab-descended elite, and thus of a key constituency for al-Muntasir to keep satisfied.
In any case, Ubaid Allah seems to have kept his seat at Viguera, establishing the line of the Usamids as the Umayyads' men on the spot in the western Pyrenees. The decision seems to have rankled the Tujibids of nearby Zaragoza to a degree, but the dispute must have been shoved aside, whether through some promise of al-Muntasir's or through some other agreement.
As 1028 pressed onward, al-Muntasir seems to have elected to focus his offensive attentions largely on Pamplona, with raids on several cities, one apparently coming within sight of Pamplona before being driven off. An answering raid on Washqah[1] resulted in troops from Aquitaine setting fire to much of the town before the Muslim party could drive them off, that raid coming late in the year. The hostilities, however, remained focused in the northeast, in the western Pyrenees; despite the entry of Castile into the war, King Ordono V of Leon seems to have scrupulously kept himself out of the war, focusing mostly on beating down what remained of Galicia and on repelling the occasional raids of Anglish Vikings along his coastline.
The winter of 1029 saw the war between Aquitaine and al-Andalus continue in much this manner - a series of ugly raids across the hazily-defined borders as the war ground to a stalemate. However, the year would prove pivotal, as events transpired to change the course of the war - and for that matter of western Europe.
Already an old man going into the war, Duke William V of Aquitaine, called the Great, took ill over the winter, and word circulated that he was soon to die. Queen Sancha and their son, also named William, traveled to Poitou to join William at his bedside. As the two held vigil over William and left much of the war in the hands of Geoffrey Taillefer, Count of Angoulême, who recognized William as his suzerain, unexpected word arrived from the north in the form of a declaration from the King of West Francia, Adalbert the Young.
~
Excerpt: Forever Young: Adalbert, King of the Franks - Reinhard Folkner, Barentholtz Books, 2004
It could easily be assumed that Adalbert the Young gained his nickname because he ascended to the throne as a ten-year-old boy. But sources only begin to refer to him this way late in his life, and more broadly after his death, which came later in his life - certainly well past the time when he could have been called young. And artistic depictions of Adalbert depict him as an adult man with a beard and a full head of hair, suggesting that a childlike appearance may not have been the source of his moniker.
What is commonly agreed upon, however, is that a careful reading of contemporary sources paints a picture of Adalbert which runs beyond the often-unflattering portrayal of him in histories rooted in Aquitaine and Toulouse or the ambivalent depictions seen in northern documents. Perhaps the best source for firsthand description of Adalbert not coming from his enemies comes from the account of Hilduin of Sens, a monk from the abbey of Chaumes-en-Brie, who describes him thusly:
"Now the King did preside over them, and he did speaketh little, as was his way, and would meeteth seldom the gazes of his subjects, for it was said that he would not deign to meet the eyes of the commons. And he was accompanied always by one or two manservants who did tend to the matters of his dining, and guideth him always in all things."
Hilduin, who apparently observed Adalbert directly on some few occasions during some manner of visit to Paris on behalf of his order, goes on to describe the King as speaking in very few words frequently stroking his beard. Together with hostile accounts from Aquitaine - particularly a letter from Duke William VI of Aquitaine advising the King to "play rather with thy baubles than mine birthright" - and the fact that he was born when his father was advanced in years, a theory has emerged suggesting that Adalbert may have suffered from some manner of cognitive impairment which resulted in his displaying childlike or simple traits even during adulthood.
The counter-theory is similarly sympathetic: That Adalbert was simply an introspective and well-meaning but ineffective ruler whose boyhood was cut short by the death of his father, Henry I, when Adalbert was just ten. The boy was thrust into the kingship of Francia in a situation where he had never truly been expected to exist. Born to a king widely expected to be a placeholder and accepted as monarch mostly in name, Adalbert exercised almost no power and grew up with most of his nobles having little respect for his authority, and his silence, awkwardness and clumsy efforts to assert the prerogative of the Frankish crown may be understood as the efforts of a man with little power to try and assert himself into a difficult world.[2]
...
In any case, the issue of Aquitaine seems to have vexed Adalbert for years. Though he seemed chronically unable to win the love or respect of his vassals, he was certainly intelligent, and knew that the Dukes of Aquitaine scarcely answered to him as it was. The prospect of a king who was as Basque as he was Aquitanian gaining control over Francia's richest fiefdom would have seriously damaged Adalbert's prospects. He exhorted Duke William V in several letters to divorce Sancha, the Basque Queen of Pamplona, in the hopes of averting what he seems to have known would be an inevitable personal union of Pamplona and Aquitaine under she and William's son, also named William. Adalbert's requests were turned aside with a rebuke from high churchmen within Aquitaine's borders.
As Aquitaine turned its military attention to Muslim Iberia, Adalbert, wrapping up a minor land dispute with the Dukes of Anjou, turned his attention back to the matter of his troublesome southern vassal. While he did not send troops to his vassal's aid, it would seem that he was keeping careful track of the war effort, and particularly on the health of William V.
Adalbert's agenda seems fairly transparent: Knowing that he could probably not win in an outright war against William, given that most of his vassals could not be counted on to support him, Adalbert planned to allow Aquitaine to exhaust itself in a fruitless war against the Andalusians. He allowed the conflict to drag on through 1028, mostly fruitlessly for either side, until early in 1029, when William V emerged from the winter ill and sure to die.
Swiftly, Adalbert dispatched a proclamation to Poitou, arriving with William days from death. The proclamation stated that Adalbert would grant the Duchy of Aquitaine to his son, six-year-old Henry. Such a thing wasn't without precedent: Aquitaine had been granted to the late Hugh Capet by the former king Lothair some decades before the succession crisis of the 980s, and that claim had proven a deep bone of contention between he and William V's father, William IV Fierebras, during the succession dispute.
The declaration drew a hotly-worded response from William VI, accusing Adalbert of breaking the oath between liege and vassal by refusing to come to the aid of Aquitaine in war and declaring that Aquitaine would be his. Shortly after that, the ill William V died, leaving William VI to take the throne at the the tender age of fifteen.
Growing up under the tutelage of the ambitious Queen Sancha, the young William proved to be his mother's son - ambitious, charming and somewhat precocious. While under the control of a regency council, William VI seems to have been fairly assertive even in his teen years - perhaps not brilliant, but charming and with a great deal of drive. Upon his father's death, and no doubt at the prompting of his mother, he arranged a florid coronation ceremony for himself at Poitou, where he was crowned Duke of Aquitaine in defiance of Adalbert's edict. At the same time, in Paris, Adalbert issued another edict proclaiming Henry as Duke of Aquitaine, then mustering an army to settle the issue in the hopes that Aquitaine would be vulnerable after the war in the Pyrenees.
Bolstering Adalbert's hopes was his belief that he had secured the aid of Richard III, the powerful Duke of Normandy.[3] In fact Richard would never deliver on his side of the bargain, believing William to be a more useful ally than Adalbert, and seeing the opportunity to increase his own standing relative to the crown. Adalbert got some help from his vassals, particularly his relatives in Vermandois, but nevertheless came into the dispute with Aquitaine on more of a level playing field than he anticipated, albeit still with what appeared to be an advantage.
The feud over Aquitaine had immediate ramifications in the Pyrenees. The Aquitanian-Andalusian War did not immediately end, but the levies of Aquitaine largely turned and marched home, leaving the brunt of the conflict to be borne by men from Pamplona and Castile. The loss of Aquitanian troops in the south largely allowed Andalusian Caliph al-Muntasir to raid at will, torching Najera in 1029, much to the consternation of Sancha. With William VI engaged in the north, Adalbert's actions unknowingly gave al-Muntasir's war-wracked empire a much-needed chance to catch its breath after years of conflict, with the result that Adalbert is often credited as pivotal in saving Islam in Europe.
[1] Huesca.
[2] There's no way for the historians to know, but ITTL modern medical science would consider Adalbert to be fairly high-functioning autistic - he's extremely smart for a medieval king but struggles somewhat with things like social interaction, people-reading and communication. I make this note largely to emphasize that I don't mean to vilify autism or autism spectrum disorders here. The truth here is that Adalbert is a good man trying to preserve his kingdom even though he's not sure how he can do it or why his vassals hate him so much. Sadly medieval Frankish dukes are somewhat less understanding.
[3] As is tradition, this is a different Richard III. Different sperm = different man.
