The Carolingian Dynasty was a Frank'Ish noble family with origins in the Arnold or Pipp'Inid clans of the 7th CE. The dynasty is considered to have been founded by Arnold, Bishop of Metz, who wielded a great deal of power and influence in the Mero'Vingian kingdoms.
The name 'Carolingian' derives from the latin name of Charles Martel, 'Carolus.' The family consolidated its power in the late 8th CE, eventually making the offices of 'major of the palace' and 'Duke and Prince of the Franks' hereditary and becoming the real power behind the throne.
Charles Martel (688-22 Oct.741) was a Frankish statesman and military leader who, as Duke and Prince of the Franks and Mayor of the Palace, was 'de facto' ruler of France from 718 until his death. He was the son of Pepin of Herstal and his 2nd wife Alpaida. Pepin worked to establish his family, the Pippinids, as the strongest in France. He united all the Frankish realms by the conquest of Neustria and Burgundy in 687. Also increased the power of the Franks in foreign conflicts, by the subjugation of the Alemanni, the Frisians, and the Franconians. Pepin also began the process of 'evangelization' of Germany. His statesmanship was notable for the further diminution of Mero'Vingian royal authority, and for the acceptance of the undisputed right to rule for his family. Therefore, Pepin was able to name as heir, his grandson, Theudoald. But, this was not accepted by his powerful son Charles Martel, leading to a civil war after his death in which Charles emerged victorious.
Charles was described as 'illegitimate,' but polygamy was a legitimate Frankish practice at the time. The idea of illegitimacy was derived of Pepin's 1st wife. Plectrude, and her desire to see her progeny as heirs to Pepin's power. Prior to Pepin's death in December 714, Plectrude urged him to designate Theudoald, his grandson by his late son Grimoald, his heir in his entire realm. The motion was entirely opposed by the nobles because Theudoald was a child of only 8 years of age. To prevent Charles using this unrest to his own advantage, she had him imprisoned in Cologne, preventing an uprising in Austrasia, but not in Neustria. Charles escaped from prison and was acclaimed Major by the nobles of the kingdom.
Between 718 and 723, Charles secured his power through a series of victories winning the loyalty of several important bishops and abbots by donating lands and money for the foundation of abbeys, such as the commune with town status of Lechternach in Eastern Luxem'Burg.
Having unified the Frankish under his banner, Charles was determined to punish the Saxons who had invaded Austrasia. He defeated them in the Teuto'Burg Forest, a range of low, forested hills in the today German states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-West'Phalia. Although he did not trust the language of the non Christians, Aldegisel, a Frisian king, in the coastal region along the South Eastern corner of the North Sea in what today is mostly a large part of Netherlands, including modern Friesland and smaller part of Germany, accepted Christianity, and Charles sent Willibrord, a North'Umbriam bishop of Utrecht, to convert the people, he was later known as the 'Apostle of the Frisians.' Charles also did much to support, in his own language, Winfrid, later Boniface, the 'Apostle of the Germans.'
In 725 CE, Charles concentrated his attention to the Umayyads Caliphate, virtually for the remainder of his life. With the activity of the Muslims in Acquitane, Charles believed he needed a virtually full-time army -one he could train intensely- as a core of veteran Franks who would be augmented with the usual conscripts called up in time of war. During the Early Middle Ages, troops were only available after the crops had been planted and before harvesting time. To train the kind of infantry that could withstand the Muslim heavy cavalry, Charles needed them year-round, and he needed to pay them so their families could buy the food they would have otherwise grown. To obtain the money he seized church lands and property, and used the funds to pay his soldiers. The same Charles who had secured the support of the Christian Church by donating land, seized some of it back between 724 and 732 CE. Of course, Church officials were enraged, and, for a time, it looked as though Charles might even be punished by excommunication for his actions. But then came a significant invasion.
The Muslims were not aware, at that time, of the true strength of the Franks, or the fact that they were building a disciplined army instead of the typical barbarian hordes that dominated Europe after Rome's fall. The Arab awareness of the Franks as a growing military power came only after the Battle of Tours when the Caliph expressed shock at his army's catastrophic defeat.
Charles ability to coordinate infantry and cavalry veterans was unequaled in that specific era and enabled him to face superior numbers of invaders, and to decisively defeat them again and again.
In 736-737, Muslims knew that the Franks were a real power, and that Charles personally was a force to be reckoned with. They had no intention of allowing Charles to catch them unaware and dictate the time and place of battle, as it was before. Unfortunately, Muslims overestimated the time it would take Charles to developed heavy cavalry equal to that of the Muslims. Caliphate believed it would take a generation, but Charles managed it in 5 years. Charles again championed Christianity and halted Muslim expansion into Europe.
In 739 CE, Pope Gregory III begged Charles for his aid against Liutprand, but Charles was loath to fight his onetime ally and ignored the Papal plea. This begging showed how far Charles had come from the days he was tottering on excommunication, and set the stage for his son and grandson to rearrange Italian political boundaries to suit the Papacy, and protect its interest.
Charles Martel died on October 22, 741 in France. He strengthened the Frankish state by consistently defeating, through superior generalship, the host of hostile foreign nations which beset it on all sides, including the non- Christian Saxons, whom his grandson Charlemagne would fully subdue, and Moors, whom he halted on a path of continental domination. Charles was the absolute ruler of the virtually all of today's continental Western Europe North of the Pyrynees. Only the remaining Saxon realms, which he partly conquered, Lombardy, and the Marca Hispanica North of the Pyrynees were significant additions to the Frankish realms after his death.
He was also the founder of all feudal systems and merit system that marked the Carolingian Empire, and Europe in general during the Middle Ages, though his son and grandson would gain credit for his innovations.
Charles was a brilliant strategic general, who also was tactical commander par excellence, able in the heat of a battle to adapt his plans to his foe's forces and movements, and to defeat them repeatedly, especially when they were far superior in men and weaponry. Charles had the best quality which defines genuine greatness in a military commander: "he foresaw the dangers of his foes, and prepared for them with care; he used ground, time, place, and fierce loyalty of his troops to offset his foe's superior weaponry and tactics, and adapted again and again to the enemy on the battlefield, shifting to compensate for the unforeseen and unforeseeable."
Charles Martel cemented his place in history with his participation in the defense of the Christianity movement in Europe against a Muslim army. The Iberian Saracens (people who lived in the desert areas in and near the Roman province of Arabia, and who were specifically distinguished as a people from others known as Arabs), had incorporated Berber light-horse cavalry with the heavy Arab cavalry to create a formidable army that had almost never defeated. European forces, meanwhile, lacked the powerful tool of stirrup, a light frame or ring that holds the foot of a rider, attached to the saddle by a strap, greatly increasing the rider's ability to stay in the saddle and control the mount, increasing the animal's usefulness to the rider in warfare or any other areas such as transportation. In his victory, Charles earned the surname "Martel" ("The Hammer"), the paramount prince of his age.
Though he never cared about titles, his son Pippin did, and finally asked the Pope: "Who should be King, he who has the title, or he who has the power?"
The Pope, highly dependent on Frankish armies for his independence from Lombards and Byzantine power, declared to him; "he who had the power" and immediately crowned Pippin.
Decades later, in 800 CE, Pippin's son Charlemagne was crowned emperor by the Pope,further extending the principle by delegitimizing the nominal authority of the Byzantine Emperor in the Italian Peninsula and ancient Roman Gaul, including the Iberian outposts Charlemagne had established in the Marca Hispanica across the Pyrenees, what today forms Catalonia. The bulk of the Western Roman Empire had come under Carolingian rule.
He divided his realm between his adult sons, without opposition, a year earlier:
- Carlo'Man he gave Austrassia, Alemannia, and Thuringia,
- Pippin the Younger he gave Neustria, Burgundy, Provence, and Metz and Trier in the 'Mosel Duchy;' to - Grifo was given several lands throughout the kingdom, just before Charles died.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Metz in France, part of the Holy Roman Empire, was an independent state (prince-bishopric) in the Middle Ages, ruled by the price-bishop who had the ex officio title of 'Count.' It was annexed to France by King Henry II in 1552, and recognized in the 'Peace of West-Phalia of 1648.
Metz already was a bisphoric by 535 CE and the Basilica of Saint-Pierre-aux-Nonnains, a pre-medieval church building, began its life as a Roman 'Gymnasium' (type of school), for a Roman spa complex, in the 4th CE. In the 7th CE, the structure was converted into a church, becoming the chapel of a Benedictine monastic community. Each monastery, priory or abbey within the Order maintained its own autonomy. A new nave was constructed in the 11th CE with further interior renovations. In the 16th CE, the building became a warehouse, and remained at such until the 1970s when it was restored and opened for concerts and exhibitions.
The 'Graoully' is depicted as a fearsome dragon, vanquished by, according to a legend, the supernatural powers of Clement of Metz, the 1st Bishop of the city. The Graoully quickly became a symbol and can be seen in numerous insignia of the city from the 10th CE on.
According to tradition, constructed much later to lend more antiquity to the diocese, Clement was sent by the Apostle Peter during the 1st century, with 2 disciples: Celestius de Metz and Felix de Metz, and listed as his successors. This legend also states that Clement was the uncle of Pope Clement.
The legend states that the Graoully, along with countless other snakes, inhabited the local Roman Amphitheater. The snakes' breath had so poisoned the area that the inhabitants of the town were trapped in the town. After the collective belief that the local inhabitants were turning themselves to Christianity with the common purpose of getting rid of the dragon, Clement presented himself to the assembly of serpents and made the sign of the cross after the snakes attacked him. They immediately were tamed by this. Clement led the Graoully to the edge of the Seille Lorraine River, North Eastern of France, and ordered him and his assembly of snakes to disappear into a place where there were no men or beasts. Orius, the king, did not convert to Christianity by heart, after Clement tamed the dragon. However, when the king's daughter died, Clement brought her back from the dead, thereby resulting in the king's conversion.
In 1648 CE, Metz was part of the province of the Three Bihoprics of pre-revolutionary France. They consisted of the dioceses of Metz, Verdun, and Toul within the Lorraine region. Lorraine's predecessor, Lotharingia, was an independent Carolingian kingdom under the rule of Lothair II (855-869). Its land had originally been part of Middle France, created in 843 CE by the Treaty of Verdum, when the Carolingian empire was divided between the 3 sons of Louis the Pious.
The Carolingian Empire during the reign of Charlemagne covered most Western Europe, as the Roman Empire once had. He crushed all Germanic resistance and extended his realm to the Elbe, influencing events almost to the Russian Steppes.
Prior to the death of Charlemagne, the Empire was divided among various members of the Carolingian dynasty :
- Charles the Younger, son of Charlemagne, who received Neustria. He died without heirs in 811 CE.
- Louis the Pious, who received Aquitaine, was made co-Emperor with Italy in 1813, and the entire Empire passed to him with Chalemagne's death in the winter of 814 CE. He established three new Carolingian Kingships for his sons from his 1st marriage: Lothar was made King of Italy and co-Emperor, Pepin was made King of Aquitaine, and Louis the German was made King of Bavaria.
His attempts in 823 CE to bring his 4th son, from his 2nd marriage, Charles the Bald into the will was marked by the resistance of his eldest sons, and the last year of his reign was plagued by civil war.
- Pepin, who received Italy. He died with an illegitimate son, Bernard, in 813 CE.
Lothar was stripped of his title in 829 CE and was banished to Italy. The following year his sons attacked Louis' empire and dethroned him in favor of Lothar. The following year Louis attacked Lothar's sons Kingdoms, stripped Lothar of his imperial title and granted the Kingdom of Italy to Charles. Pepin and Louis the German revolted in 832 CE, followed by Lothar in 833 CE, and together they imprisoned Louis the Pious and Charles.
In 835 CE, peace was made within the family, and Louis was restored to the imperial throne. When Pepin died in 838 CE, Louis crowned Charles king of Aquitaine, while the nobility elected Pepin's son Pepin II, a conflict which was not restored until 860 CE with the death of Pepin II.
When Louis the Pious finally died in 840 CE, Lothar claimed the entire empire irrespective of the partitions. Charles and Louis the German went to war against him. After losing the conflict, Lothar fled to his capital at Aachen and raised a new army, which was inferior to that of the younger brothers.
In 842, in the Oats of Stras'Bourg (mutual pledges), Charles and Louis agreed to declare Lothar unfit for the imperial throne. This marked the East-West division of the Empire between Louis and Charles and was finally settled in 843 CE by and between Louis the Pious's 3 sons in the Treaty of Verdun.
The Oaths of Stras'Bourg is considered a milestone in European history because it symbolize the birth of France and Germany.
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