WI: France and HRE

What if France was part off the HRE from the beginning. There is no French emperor and the land is like German lands cut in many small pieces.
 
What if France was part off the HRE from the beginning. There is no French emperor and the land is like German lands cut in many small pieces.

In terms of population, the kingdom of France weighed more than the HRE, and much more than the german part of the HRE.
 
So a surviving Carolingian Empire?

Somehow make it such that the Carolingians survive as a single line for a few generations and crowning their sons as co-emperors like the Capets did IOTL, keeping away the partible inheritance. Give Charelmagne a single mature heir on his death, and give that heir a single heir of his own, and so on, until primogeniture is tradition. The lands from Saxony to the Spanish March, from Brittany to the Eastmark, become one kingdom, which contends with the Byzantine Empire as the heirs to Rome.
 

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This might actually make the empire more stable because you get rid of a strong rival next door, who in later centuries pretty much made HRE decentralization a major foreign policy, as well as keep the Pope from being to confrontational to the emperor of most of Catholic Christendom.
 
This might actually make the empire more stable because you get rid of a strong rival next door, who in later centuries pretty much made HRE decentralization a major foreign policy, as well as keep the Pope from being to confrontational to the emperor of most of Catholic Christendom.

Disagree. The decentralization was an inner and structural tendancy of the Carolingian empire as well as of the HRE.

My opinion is that the top-down imperial feudal structure of the Carolingian empire and of the HRE was a dead-end structurally leading to fragmentation.

Just consider how the Capetians, and other successful dynasties did to build strong political entities. They chose the bottom-up path. First of all build a powerbase where they were unchallenged and unassailable. Then use this local powerbase to give much more strength to the previously vanishing royal power and cut the feudal middlemen both from the top (stronger royal powers) and from the base (supporting the enfranchizement movement of the commons-towns).
 
In terms of population, the kingdom of France weighed more than the HRE, and much more than the german part of the HRE.

Personaly I think that there would be enough non-France in the empire for France not to completely dominate it. Especialy if we consider that France would probably as divided as the German (and Italian) part was. Actualy if I remember my medieval history correctly, until Philip Augustus France was pretty disunited and I doubt someone similar will arise in this case. Someone trying to unite the lands would have to unite not only France, but also the Ferman parts, making it a lot harder to unite them.
 
Personaly I think that there would be enough non-France in the empire for France not to completely dominate it. Especialy if we consider that France would probably as divided as the German (and Italian) part was. Actualy if I remember my medieval history correctly, until Philip Augustus France was pretty disunited and I doubt someone similar will arise in this case. Someone trying to unite the lands would have to unite not only France, but also the Ferman parts, making it a lot harder to unite them.

Decentralized does not mean disunited. When the kingdom of France was threatened by the HRE, the then weak king could however count on the mobilization and support of his very powerful vassals.

This being said, you are right. France in the HRE means France not existing as OTL. However, there had been previous political entities that correspondre rather well with what was going to become France. Basically, there were the italian-italic peoples, the gallo-roman peoples, and the germanic peoples.

And the first group demographically weighed much more than the others and much much much more than the germanic groups.
 
Decentralized does not mean disunited. When the kingdom of France was threatened by the HRE, the then weak king could however count on the mobilization and support of his very powerful vassals.

This being said, you are right. France in the HRE means France not existing as OTL. However, there had been previous political entities that correspondre rather well with what was going to become France. Basically, there were the italian-italic peoples, the gallo-roman peoples, and the germanic peoples.

And the first group demographically weighed much more than the others and much much much more than the germanic groups.
Personaly I believe that with France it would become a much more multicultural empire than it was OTL. It would have (northern) Italians, French (language d'oc as well as language d'oill), Bretons, Germans (low Germans, as well as high Germans, including the Swiss and Dutch) and Czech. So I think the French part of the empire will be extremely influential, I don't think the empire would be French (my guess would be that Aachen will be the capital). The emperor will often be French, but certainly not always.
 
Personaly I believe that with France it would become a much more multicultural empire than it was OTL. It would have (northern) Italians, French (language d'oc as well as language d'oill), Bretons, Germans (low Germans, as well as high Germans, including the Swiss and Dutch) and Czech. So I think the French part of the empire will be extremely influential, I don't think the empire would be French (my guess would be that Aachen will be the capital). The emperor will often be French, but certainly not always.

I do agree. It will not be french. It will not either be german.

What you are describing about the part that came to be known as France would probably happen too with the part that came to be known as Germany. Fact is that there were OTL 2 or 3 Germanies : the one looking eastwards for colonization, the one that historically had long been in roman orbit (close to the Rhine and the Danube), and the one that was looking northwards.

If you consider the Carolingians, the center of their power was in what came to be known as Lotharingia, that was for centuries a mixed area.
 
I do agree. It will not be french. It will not either be german.
Exactly. Actualy in this caseI suspect that the northern Italians would become more part of the HRE than they were OTL. With France part of the Empire the Alpes aren't as big of a barrier anymore.
 
Exactly. Actualy in this caseI suspect that the northern Italians would become more part of the HRE than they were OTL. With France part of the Empire the Alpes aren't as big of a barrier anymore.

I am more hesitating concerning Italy. The point is that any people that has been the imperial people, the elite people of the empire, has a strong natural trend to consider itself as exceptional and can hardly be assimilated with or by others. Just consider hebrews-jews, greeks, or italians. They had the most ancient and strongest collective cultural self-consciousness.

As to the italians, just consider the romans, wy which I mean the inhabitants of the medieval ruined and almost desert city of Rome. They still considered themselves as the imperial people who had the right to crown the emperor, and even claimed their right to elect the emperor and the pope. They of course had almost no means to back their claims, but they still did. Italy was the most advanced area in medieval latin christendom, be it culturally, economically and technically, which created a strong incentive not to merge with others.
 
I would expect a kingdom or 2 in the France part like Bohemia and Austria. Those probebly got Electorate votes as well my best gues would be a Kingdom off France that has Paris as capital and maybe Burgundy (no idea what its capital would be)
 
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