Part XVII: The West
We will begin our wider look at the world by going over the political status of the former Western half of the Empire, excepting of course most of Italy and North Africa. Primarily this means the former provinces in Hispania, Gallia, and Brittania.
Hispania you will recall was under the control of the old Gothic tribes that had migrated West under Aleric and his successors, sacked Rome in the 400s, and then settled into southern Gael, a region name arising from
confusion we will eventually cover, after the sack of Rome, and eventually being given leave to invade Hispania by a Roman general to try and get the Vandals and Suebians under control. This failed spectacularly as the Vandals instead crossed into North Africa and took Carthage, effectively killing the Western regions of Rhomania.
Originally the Goths were ruled by a dynasty descending from Alaric’s family, but by the mid-500s this line was extinct and the Goths adopted a completely elected system of kings, making direct lines from father to son an extreme rarity. This was about as good an idea as it sounds. Civil Wars and rebels plagued the kingdom throughout its history, but despite these by the time the Romans were forced to withdraw completely from Spania under Theodosius the Goths did control the entire peninsula.
By the year 750 the kingdom had changed hands thirty times, with rebellions and usurpers were common. This number is actually dragged down a bit by the occasional strong kings, particularly Sisenand III who was a strong and dynamic ruler in who took the throne in 660 and then held power for the next thirty years, defeating two short-lived rebellions whose leaders are not counted. Sisenand tried to consolidate more power in the monarchy by adapting a model based on the Mayors of the Palace in Francia, but with himself in that position. He was largely effective while alive, but his attempt to leave the king to his eldest son provoked a major rebellion, which saw the new king dead inside of two years.
The Gothic Kingdom held together however because none of these rebellions were about actually destroying central authority. Rather they were fought to focus that power and authority in someone different. Much like the civil wars of the Romans.
But that said, the constant infighting among the nobility both destroyed their credibility with the common people, and also severely damaged the Spanish economy. Roads were destroyed, fields burned, and overland trade was nonexistent. Communities were as self-sufficient as possible, and the state’s foundations steadily eroded. If there had been an outside challenger interested in taking control of the Goths they likely would have been able to do so. But the Franks were focused inward, and then north, while the Romans maintained their own focus intently on the East.
That’s not to say there was no trade. The cities of the Eastern coast did a brisk overseas trade with the Franks out of Massilia, and better trade with the Romans in Italy and Africa. These merchants will become extremely important later, but for now they were just a group of well off men trying to make a living in the controlled chaos of Gothic Hispani.
North of Hispani was the Kingdom of the Franks, centered around old Roman Gallia, with territory extending into Germani. This kingdom had arisen from Frankish control over northern Gallia in the waning days of the Western parts of the Empire. It had previously belonged to Burgundians, the Goths, and of course the last bastion of the Roman Empire. The Franks were pagans until the early 500s when their king, Clovis, converted to Nicaean Christianity, a move that had incalculable impact on the the history of Europe, as it was this decision, rather than the conversion to Arianism, which solidified Orthodox Christianity to form the basis of Western European religion.
Twenty years alter Clovis’s sons would launch an invasion of the Burgundi, decisively defeating the king in 523 and subsequently annexed his territory. The Franks also drove the Goths south of the Pyrenei Mountains as the years wore on, but for now showed little interest in trying to enforce control south of the range. As discussed during the time of Justinian II the Frankish king Dagobert used the murder of the pope by the Arian Lombards as an excuse to invade northern Italy in 642, prodded along by Roman promises, and subsequently annexed Italy around the Po River.
Dagobert’s reign however would be the beginning of a decline of his dynasty. The Franks had an inheritance system that was, if anything, even worse than that of the Goths. Frankish men would divide their property equally between sons when they died. This had the effect of making each generation worse off than the previous. The practice was damaging enough on a personal level, but the Franks applied it to the Kingdom as well.
To say that instability followed would be an understatement. Civil Wars between brothers were incredibly common, any king who amassed a decent amount of power during his life would inevitably destroy it all again when he died.
Contributing even more to this decline in Royal Power was the organization of the state itself. The King gave out land to his nobles in exchange for military service, but whenever the king needed the nobles to fight for him they would often demand even greater gifts, resulting in a consistent strengthening of the lords in relation to the king.
The actual realm of the Franks had been split into two kingdoms at various points in its history, notably in 567, but the two kingdoms had reunited by the 700s. By reunited I mean one had reconquered the other. Maybe, records are somewhat spotty for whether the kingdoms even had separate names at this point. But for our purposes we will use those given by later historians. I should also note that in these names the kingdoms were referred to in Latin to avoid confusion with the territory of the Romans, which was either referred to as simply the Imperium Romania, or the Basileo Rhomania depending on where in the Empire you happened to be writing from.
The first was the Regnum Orientis, or Eastern Kingdom was where the Franks originally lived. This meant that the kingdom controlled the Rhine River, parts of Germani, and the old provinces of Germani Superior and Inferior. The capital was at various points at Cologne, or later at Aachen. The second kingdom was the Regnum Occidens, or Western Kingdom. Which was headquartered at Parisius.
When the kingdoms were united the capital was usually Parisius.
Complicating matters further was that in the future a third kingdom would arise out of the south, mostly centered around the old Aquitainian provinces, and there was still the independent minded, but weak Burgundi who lived in the southwest.
All told, the Frankish state was the most powerful realm to arise out of the old Western provinces. It retained a solid state system, apart from the acutal rulers.
By the 700s the king of the Franks was a toothless position. What power might have been wielded was left to the Mayors of the Palace, a line of men to whom Pepin Martel belonged. This power distribution was yet another source of instability as kings fought with their own Mayors over power as well. But in 732 Pepin overthrew his theoretical king and took official power for himself. The Emperor sent along congratulations, and the Pope legitimized the move, granting Pepin more legitimacy than he might otherwise have gained.
King Pepin spent the remainder of his life at war with his own nobility regardless however, prying lands and men back under the control of the crown. He died in 741, but left a single adult son behind, Louis, who continued, and ultimately finished, his father’s work. He would die in 757, with only a single son as well. That son, Carloman, would turn Frankish attention outward again for the first time in over a century as he looked East to deal with the pagans still living in Germani. His work in turn would be finished by his own son Louis II, Louis Magnus. And finally, Louis's son would turn Frankish attention north for the first time, as the final group of Western powers came under assault.
That last group are of course the Anglos and the Saxons on the island of Britanni. This island had been abandoned by the Emperor Honorius in the early 400s, and was subsequently overrun by pagans from Germani, who drove what remained of the Romans into the Western parts of the country, modern Volki, named after one of the old Brittanic tribes on the island. The pagans set up a group of seven kingdoms which took up the remainder of the province, the Eastern Saxons, the Western Saxons, the Southern Saxons, Cantware, Myrce, the Eastern Angles, and the North.
While each would retain independence for the next few centuries Myrce was the largest and came to dominate the remainder by 750, a situation which would continue until the coming of the Varangians.
The pagans of the island were steadily converted through the seventh century, with the kings allowing themselves to be baptized one by one, until finally the Church was once again firmly entrenched on the island. The Church in Saxeland, the name for the territories controlled by the Angles and Saxons, however would always be in less than lock-step with Rome, and the island’s current heretics can be said to continue that tradition, even if nothing else positive may be said. There are some records about how the pre-Varangian Saxons ruled, but not much. It would be largely irrelevant regardless since the seven kingdoms would not survive the storm of the next century, and it will not be until the late 1200s that the Saxons would regain any form of independence from foreign lords.
North of the Saxons kingdoms were the lands of the Caledonians. For whom a lack of records is a complete understatement. The Romans had at times campaigned into Caledonia, but from what we know the Emperor Hadrian’s decision to leave the lands to their own devices was the best option. Better to let the Caldeonians be left to their eternal war against their mortal foe, the Caledonians, than to get involved.
Next door to Britanni was the island of Hiberni, but we know even less about that island than we do about Caledonia, about whom we know virtually nothing. The island had converted to Christianity sometime in the fifth century. Maybe. Even the old Church records don’t have much to go on in regards to Hiberni.
Back across the sea the lands East of the Franks were the wilds of old Germani, from which the tribes that overran the West mostly came. These lands were still pagan, still barbarian, and would remain so until the Franks forced civilization upon them at sword-point. We will talk about those in the next century when the Frankish campaigns take place.
And that is the West as it basically stood in 750. A turbulent place, but at least one where Christianity held firm dominion.
Next time we will look to the Persians, where the victory of even the heretics of the East is still a long way away.