Dominic Sandbrook
Appearances
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
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The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
So this is surely a key moment in the transition from late antiquity to early medieval, right? That a vestige of kind of Roman cultural, spiritual life has been smashed. More power has been concentrated in the hands of the warlords who are now making themselves kings.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Okay, well, that's good enough for me. Okay, but not everybody in the church thinks Charles is a bad guy. And in fact, there are bishops who think, oh, he's brilliant, aren't there?
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
The Merovingian dynasty, from which the Franks were accustomed to choose their kings, is thought to have lasted down to King Chilperic III, who was deposed on the order of Stephen II, the Pope of Rome. His hair was cut short and he was shut up in a monastery.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Who on earth would that be? We'll find out after the break. What a cliffhanger. Who is this person? Don't go away.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
okay i have to tell you i was just looking on ebay where i go for all kinds of things i love and there it was that hologram trading card one of the rarest the last one i needed for my set shiny like the designer handbag of my dreams one of a kind ebay had it and now everyone's asking ooh where'd you get your windshield wipers ebay has all the parts that fit my car no more annoying just beautiful
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Though this dynasty may seem to have come to an end only with Chilperic III, it had really lost all power years before and it no longer possessed anything at all of importance beyond the empty title of king. The wealth and the power of the kingdom were held tight in the hands of certain leading officials of the court who were called the mayors of the palace and on them supreme authority devolved.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
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The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Rules and restrictions may apply. Welcome back to The Rest is History. We ended with one of the great cliffhangers, not merely in the history of this podcast, but I think in the history probably of all human civilization. Who or what is the possible source of authority that could bestow kingship on Carloman and Pepin? These people who are ruling Australia and Neustria in the realm of the Franks.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Massive questions. Massive question. And you gave a little spoiler, I felt, disappointingly. You said our eyes would be turning to Rome. So tell us, who is this person?
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Yeah. Well, they're not entirely wrong, to be fair.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
All that was left to the king was that content with his royal title he should sit on the throne with his hair long and his beard flowing and act the part of a ruler. Whenever he needed to travel, he went in a cart which was drawn in rural manner by yoked oxen, with a cow herd to drive them.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
So Ravenna, to be fair, had been an imperial capital for a while.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
But the Pope is not entirely devoid of assets, is he? He's got his spiritual assets. He's still a prestigious person. He's still the preeminent head of any church in the Christian world, right? He's got a palace that was given to the papacy by Constantine. And he's the heir of St. Peter. So he's not nothing. He's not nobody. Yeah, you're absolutely right.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
In this fashion, he would go to the palace and to the General Assembly of his people, which was held each year to settle the affairs of the kingdom, and in this fashion he would return home again. That's the opening to the life of Charlemagne by Einhardt, the Frankish scholar and courtier. And he wrote that just after Charlemagne's death.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Right. And is this where we get back to the Franks? Because surely, and one very obvious person, is one of the sons of Charles Martel. And in particular, Pepin. We talked about Pepin in the first half. So Pepin is going to step forward as the sword and shield of the papacy, is he?
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
And he's describing the greatest, the most famous of all Frankish kings, one of the titanic names in all European history. Lots of people, I think, Tom, will have heard the name of Charlemagne. But to be completely honest, I think a lot of people have heard the name and have no real sense of who he was. Was he French? Was he German? Obviously, he was neither.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
He's got John Adams's voice, President John Adams.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
He's like Richard Nixon. Right, right. I think we agreed that Nixon was from Somerset.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
So he's talking about the Merovingian bloke who's still hanging around. He's saying, let's get rid of him. Give me the crown. Enough of the Merovingians. Who cares about them?
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Well, he's the father of both and yet was neither. Now, Einhardt, let's just talk about Einhardt for a second, because he writes this very extraordinary biography of Charlemagne, doesn't he? Yeah, pretty unique, really. Yeah. And he was very proud of the fact that he was so familiar personally with Charlemagne, wasn't he?
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Oh, yes. We love a short man on The Rest Is History. We do. Yes.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
And so do the Franks live up to their side of their bargain? Because obviously he's looking to them to protect him against the Lombards, isn't he?
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
You know, everything is ready for even more impressive conquests. But there's an obvious problem, this issue of two sons. So the Franks have a history of dividing up their realms, but to avoid fighting, to divide them up between different brothers. And when you've got two brothers here, Charles and Carloman... Is there not an enormous latent potential for a civil war between the two of them?
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Wonderful. So if you're a member of the Rest Is History Club, you can hear the next episode and indeed the third episode in our Charlemagne trilogy right away. If you're not, you can hear them by signing up at therestishistory.com. What better Christmas present to yourself could there be? Literally can't think of any.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
But if you're Scrooge or the Grinch, then I'm afraid you're going to have to wait till next week because we'll be back on Monday and then on Christmas Day with the final two episodes of our mighty series on the life of Charlemagne. Tom, a veritable tour de force. Thank you very much and goodbye. Bye-bye.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Well, here is a reminder that we at therestishistory.com offer gift memberships. So if you're good at dropping hints, or if you're short on a present for a family member, for a friend, or for a partner, Tom and I would like to remind you of the ultimate Christmas stocking filler. And it is, of course, a subscription to the Rest Is History Club, which is full to the brim with bonus episodes.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
It's got access to the much-loved Discord chat community. It's got newsletters. It's got all kinds of goodies. Simply go to therestishistory.com and look for gifts.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
And we have some incredibly exciting news to tell you, don't we, Dominic? We do. So we often say we've got exciting news, but this is genuinely very, very exciting news. We are thrilled to announce that after the sellout show that we did earlier this year, The Rest Is History will be returning to the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday, the 4th of May to perform live once again with an orchestra.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
So that first show that we did this year was a truly glorious experience. And we are hoping that this, too, will be an unforgettable night. There'll be great music. We'll be telling great stories. We'll be delving into the history. So you had better get your hands on tickets for the show as soon as you can.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
That is the Rest Is History live with the Philharmonia Orchestra Tchaikovsky and Wagner. It's at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday, the 4th of May. Now, the tickets are available for members on Wednesday, the 18th of December and for the general public on Thursday, the 19th of December. And please make sure that you don't miss it.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
After all, Christmas is just around the corner. And a very happy coincidence, our first official Rest Is History book is now out as the perfect stocking-sized paperback.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
It's sure to make the festive period much more entertaining for all involved, and it is available in bookshops everywhere now.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
A lot of people find it very hard to pin down neither holy nor Roman nor an empire, famously said about it.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Sinister forces are scouring the globe for the secret to an ancient power, and only one person can stop them. Indiana Jones. Adventure Calls.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
Okay, let's get going and let's get a sense of the context. In the last three episodes, we talked about the rise of the Franks, the warlords of the West, and we ended with the Battle of Tours. And people who listened to the first episode will remember that Charlemagne is not, in fact, the first Frankish warlord to have the title of Augustus.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
They will remember that three centuries earlier, another Frankish warlord, that is to say Clovis, had been hailed as Augustus, but not in Rome, in Tours, in the Shrine of St. Martin. He wasn't crowned by the Pope. He was crowned by himself, like Napoleon. Yeah.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
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The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
So Charles Martel, the hammer. And he's the bloke who won the Battle of Tours, of course. He absolutely is.
The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
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The Rest Is History
523. Charlemagne: Return of the Kings (Part 1)
They've got St. Martin. They've got all that stuff.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
I think a bit of both. I think if his honour had not been insulted, perhaps he might have taken the money and settled for peace. Really? Okay. Yes, I think so. I think. The sense that he's been shamed before the eyes of his own people and of Christian Europe generally was clearly very strong. And so he decides that he's going to fight. And so war breaks out.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Charles descends from the Alps into northern Italy. And his immediate target is Pavia, because that is where Desiderius has set himself up. But it's also because, according to reports, that is where the two nephews are, the two princes, who I'm sure have been kept in a tower. However, when he gets there, Charlemagne finds that he's too late, that the princes have been sent away to Verona.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And so he splits his forces. So the life of Hadrian, the Pope, we're told Charles left most of his forces at Pavia and with a number of his bravest Franks moved rapidly towards Verona. And this is a move that clearly takes the defenders of Verona by surprise. And Calamans' sons and his wife, who has the brilliant name of Gerberga.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
They all surrender themselves to Charlemagne, although according to the life of Hadrian, Carloman's wives and sons immediately handed themselves over of their own free wills.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
So it sounds slightly like there's some special pleading going on. And the intriguing thing is that from this point on, that is the last dimension of them.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Well, I mean, they may have been, you know, tonsured, so had their hair shaved off and packed off to the monastery. But if they were, we don't hear about it. They're probably being killed. They've been killed. I mean, you know, maybe Charlemagne Richard III did. I mean, we don't know.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Yes. Right the way through the winter. Desiderius holding out. And Charles seems to have had a slight wobble. He abandons the siege and he goes south to Rome. So it's his first visit to Rome. And he goes to St. Peter's tomb and he prays there. And whether it is for St. Peter to intercede with God to help him in the siege, or maybe, I mean, maybe it's the expression of a guilty conscience.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
I mean, maybe he feels bad about what he's done to his nephews. We don't know. But it's clearly the case that when he goes back to Pavia, his morale has been boosted. He's back in the saddle. He's full of vigor. And he prosecutes the siege with a kind of renewed sense of aggression. And if he was praying...
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
for God's assistance, then God gives it because a terrible plague breaks out in Pavia and it causes such devastation that Desiderius basically surrenders. He has no choice. Wow. So again, quoting from the life of Hadrian. the wrath of God raged and stormed against all the Lombards in that city.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And they were so enfeebled by disease and death that the excellent king of the Franks captured the city together with Desiderius. And that essentially is the end, not just of Desiderius' ambitions, but of the independence of the Lombard kingdom. And Desiderius is taken back to Francia. He is tonsured. He is sent to a monastery. And Lombardy, the kingdom isn't erased.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Charlemagne becomes king of the Lombards. So from this point on, he is described in his charters as king of the Franks and of the Lombards. But Lombardy is now clearly a part of Charlemagne's empire and his power now extends right the way to Rome. So it's a significant advance of the Frankish frontier.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
I mean, back to the time of fall of the Roman Empire in the West. Yeah. The Alps had always been a kind of frontier. So the early fifth century. Yeah. So that's an extraordinary achievement. It is. And when you consider that on top of that, at this point, he thinks he's conquered Saxony, you know, and those are reaches of land that the Caesars hadn't even ruled.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
I mean, he's starting to look very, very impressive. And the truth is that Charlemagne is a very great war leader. Indeed, he leads his men personally into battle. He conducts campaigns personally. The strategy is all his. And it's very rare that there isn't a campaign being fought somewhere on the frontiers of the Frankish realm.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
So in 790, one of the annals of Charlemagne's reign, so these are histories that record the doings, you know, in terms of what happened each year. The entry for 790 is simply, the Franks did nothing. Right. i.e. they didn't go to war. You know, this is the shortest entry we have in this annul, and it reflects the fact, you know, this is an amazing thing. There were no wars this year.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
It's the only time it happens. So every other year there is military action. And it is taking place on all the various frontiers of Charlemagne's empire. So there's Spain. So we talked in the episode we did on the Battle of Tours and in the previous one about how the Frankish kings have been pushing, let's call them the Arabs, back from the Loire region. back beyond the Pyrenees.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And Charlemagne actually crosses the Pyrenees and takes the fight to the Arabs in Spain itself. He captures the town of Pamplona, pulls down its walls so that it can't be used against him. And then he returns across the Pyrenees.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And this is a retreat that is very, very famous because as his rear guard, which is guarding his baggage, is going through the pass of Roses Valles, Rosivo, it is ambushed. And the baggage is taken.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And the commander of this baggage train, who is one of Charlemagne's palatini, so the people who attend him in his palace, paladins, as they will come to be called, Roland, the great paladin, he has a horn and he blows on the horn to signal to Charlemagne the disaster that is befalling him. And this will become the theme of one of the great, great medieval epics.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
I mean, it's a wonderful story and we could perhaps at some point do an episode on it, but it's not strictly relevant to the life of Charlemagne himself because all of that romance is massively overblown. It's not the great disaster that the poets would make it seem. Although having said that, I mean, it's obviously not brilliant that he's lost all his luggage.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And actually from that point on, Charlemagne is pretty much content to leave the Pyrenees alone. at least until the beginning of the 9th century, as we will see.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Well, the thing is that I think for a long time, the assumption has been among people like the Avars that it's cost-free to go and raid a monastery or something or to attack a town. There's nothing anyone can really do about it because they're so mobile. But this isn't Charlemagne's perspective at all. If people raid his kingdom, then he's going to go after them.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And so that's exactly what he does. And in 791, he leads what seems to be a very intimidating invasion, which he then has to abandon because there's a massive horse plague. So all his horses, about 90% it's estimated of his horses get wiped out. And this seems to be really bad for him. However, it's much worse in the long run for the Avars because, of course, the plague spreads to Pannonia.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And if they lose their horses, then they're completely screwed because without horses, they can't do anything. Their entire offensive capability depends on their ability to fight. shoot arrows from the saddle. So by the mid 790s, the Avars are being harried by the Franks, but their kingdom is starting to implode. So in 795, the Avar Khagan, so the kind of Avar chieftain, is killed by his own men.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
One of his deputies then opens negotiations with Charlemagne, writes to him to surrender his land, his people, and himself to the king. And to accept the Christian faith at the king's command, a Frankish strike force then advances against the great central palace of the Khagan.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
It's called the Ring, a great kind of structure full of all the loot that's been taken from northern Italy and from Bavaria. And the Franks take the whole lot and they pile it onto great wagons. And it's driven back to Charlemagne's court back in Austrasia, the Eastern Frankish kingdom.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And Einhard probably saw it, Charlemagne's biographer, because he gives this description of all this treasure coming into town, drawn in 15 carts, each pulled by four oxen and carrying great piles of gold and silver and precious robes of silk. And Einhard thinks this is great.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
He describes Charlemagne's victory over the Avars as the greatest and most terrible that he ever fought, but with one exception. And that exception is the war that Charlemagne fought against the Saxons. Because in fact, the hope that Charlemagne had had and that Paulinus had had when writing that poem was
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
the war against the Saxons was over, that they had accepted defeat and had accepted baptism, this proves to be massively over-optimistic, because in fact, the war rages for decades. It rages for decades for the same reason that the Romans had found it so hard to conquer Germany, because despite their overwhelming military strength,
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
The Franks find it a real struggle to kind of pin their opponents down, to force them to accept defeat once and for all.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Yeah. And this ultimately is what had defeated the Romans. But Charlemagne, in a way, I mean, his policy is kind of even more unyielding, even more unstinting, even more merciless than the Romans had been. So pretty much every spring, the Franks are riding out. to harry the Saxons. If they've broken treaties, then they will be punished really brutally.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Every autumn before they retreat back to their bases, the Franks torch the harvests of the Saxons so that they will then starve through the winter. Wherever they find a settlement in a rebellious area, they will torch it. And from 795 onwards, and again, this is very Roman, the Franks adopt a policy of mass deportations. So they are
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
taking entire peoples, entire communities and transporting them deep into the Frankish empire. When they capture the Saxon elites, they're taking them as hostages, which again is very kind of Roman and bringing them back to Charlemagne's court and kind of educating them as Christians.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
As I say, these are atrocities on a Roman scale, but the truth is that Charlemagne's inspiration is probably not Roman, but in the Old Testament, because the Pope, when he had crowned Pepin, Charlemagne's father, had hailed the Franks as a new Israel. The example of Israelite warfare actually offers... A king like Charlemagne who wants to extirpate a pagan people, quite a lot of inspiration.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
So in 782, there's a famous atrocity after a particularly violent uprising by Saxons who had supposedly accepted baptism and submitted to Charlemagne and then kind of turn against the Amasca priests, destroy churches and all of that. So Charlemagne orders that 4,500 prisoners be beheaded on a single day.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And the likelihood is, is that in ordering this punishment, he is inspired by the example of King David in the Old Testament, who similarly, you know, we have this description in the Bible, every two lengths of captives were put to death and the third length was allowed to live. So it may be that there were even more prisoners and Charlemagne spared those.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Well, Roman and biblical. I mean, it's the fusing of the two great inspirations on the Carolingians. He's bringing it to bear on the Saxons. And it's a prosecution of total warfare on a scale that is so brutal that by the late 790s, Saxon resistance finally is over. starting to be broken. This is a victory of an order that the Romans in Germany never really succeeded in winning.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
To that extent, Charlemagne can celebrate it. But of course, there is an obvious and unsettling question that is hanging over the entire war and the particularly brutal strategy that Charlemagne's been adopting in the final decade of that war, which is that the triumph might be worthy of Augustus, but is it worthy of a Christian? What does Christ think about all this?
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
This really matters to Charlemagne because Charlemagne is a very devout Christian. What he is doing, he's doing as that poem written by Paulinus suggested that you quoted at the beginning of the show, he's doing it in the hope of winning eternal life. What if the violence and the horror that he's inflicted actually is opening the gates of hell to him. And that is a very pressing question.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
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The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Well, partly because I always enjoy hearing your Yorkshire accent. Right. But also because the author of that letter was from York. He was a Northumbrian, so an Anglo-Saxon, called Alcuin. And Alcuin was a very distinguished scholar in the noblest traditions of the great achievements of Northumbrian scholarship. Venerable Bede. So he had been taught by a disciple of Bede, exactly.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
So there's a kind of scholarly link between those two extraordinary people. And Einhard, again, the biography of Charlemagne, he thought Alcuin was brilliant. He described him as the most learned man to be found anywhere. And the thing that's impressive about Alcuin is that he's also very, very good at politics. He's kind of a very seasoned diplomat.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
So in 781, he gets sent by the Bishop of York, who basically wants to be an archbishop. And there's some doubt about this. And so Alcuin goes to Rome to negotiate the absolute confirmation that the Bishop of York is actually an archbishop and Alcuin succeeds in doing that.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And then he's going back through Italy when he runs into Charlemagne and Charlemagne is all over him and says, please come and stay with me, stay in my court. And the reason for that is that Charlemagne, as well as being a very successful and on occasion brutal warlord, is also a man who is devoted to learning, to scholarship,
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
to kind of broadening the cultural horizons of himself and of his people. And he essentially, he wants a teacher. And Alcuin is a brilliant teacher. And so he stays at Charlemagne's side. He goes back to England for a couple of years. But otherwise, he stays in Francia from this point onwards. And from his letters, you can see he's a bit scared of Charlemagne. He's a bit nervous of him.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
But they do seem to have become genuinely good friends. So Charlemagne has this massive bath complex and they hang out in the baths together, kind of making jokes about Virgil. And Alcuin's a great japester. He's a great one for a nickname. So he calls Charlemagne perhaps tellingly David, as in King David. And it's all great banter and they get on tremendously well.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And Alcuin is by Charlemagne's side pretty continuously throughout this period. And then in 796, he's quite elderly by this point. I think he's about 60. He retires to Tours, which of course is the great shrine of St. Martin. So it's the most significant of all the Frankish shrines. And there he becomes the abbot.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
But he continues to take an interest, obviously, in what's going on beyond the walls of the monastery. And In 796, which is the year that he's gone to Tor, there is one thing more than anything else that is worrying Alcuin. And essentially, it's Charlemagne's policy in the East, his policy to the Saxons.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
It's because what Charlemagne is doing is a very radical policy. It's not something that Christian kings and emperors have been in the habit of doing, kind of imposing conversion at the point of a sword.
The Rest Is History
524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
People may have a vague sense that this is all that medieval kings did, but certainly in the early Middle Ages and even back in the final years of the Christian emperor, this wasn't what was happening. Because the Roman assumption, which the Franks seem to have inherited... It's basically that to have faith in Christ is both a kind of a marker and a perk of being civilized.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And the Christian God is so powerful. Why would you want to share him with your enemies? I mean, it's much better to keep him for yourself. But I think that the longer that Charlemagne fights the Saxons, the more obdurate the Saxons seem to be, the more he comes to think that his enemies are fighting in the shadow of demons.
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He is making war not just against the Saxons themselves, but against these monstrous demons that they worship. Therefore, he will never defeat the Saxons until he has also banished these terrifying and demonic gods from their lands. In addition to his military strategy, he imposes this strategy essentially of trying to wipe paganism out with extreme prejudice.
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So in 776, Charlemagne imposes a treaty on the Saxons that obliges them to accept baptism. They don't have any choice. And there's this kind of mass baptism in the River Lippe, kind of thousands and thousands are baptized. But then, of course, the moment he's gone, they all revert. And this then seems apostasy and Charlemagne is made even more furious. And so it becomes a kind of hideous cycle.
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In 785, he pronounces that scorning to come to baptism, so refusing the offer of baptism, will henceforward merit death. And he also lists a whole host of other practices that have been part of Saxon traditional way of life for goodness how long. And these two are capital offenses. So offering sacrifice to demons, as Charlemagne describes it. Cremation, so you're not allowed to do that.
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Yeah, so Charles, he rules the Franks. He's the son of Pepin, who's made himself king, getting rid of the Merovingian kings. He's the grandson of Charles Martel, great warlord. And Charles in Latin is Carolus. And so the dynasty that Pepin has founded and that Charlemagne belongs to is known by historians as the Carolingian dynasty. So Charles is top Carolingian. He's top Frank.
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You have to bury a body. Or eating meat during Lent, so the 40 days before Easter. And this is by miles the most brutal program for bringing a people to Christ. that anyone has ever attempted. This is why Alcuin objects to it. He feels that this is not what a Christian king should be doing at all. I think what sharpens this sense for Alcuin is that he is an Anglo-Saxon.
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The Anglo-Saxons remember how they had been converted, which is essentially by the example and the inspiration of holy men, not warriors. Whether it's Irish monks in the north who convert Northumbria, or the missionaries sent from Rome, under Augustine, who founds the Archbishopric in Canterbury. And I think the Anglo-Saxons also have a feeling of kinship with the Saxons.
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There's a sense that they're cousins. And so this had been an inspiration for a lot of Anglo-Saxon missionaries over the course of the 8th century to go to pagan Germany. So we talked about one of them in the previous episode, Boniface from Devon. Boniface had gone out there and he'd certainly given no quarter to paganism.
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Like Charlemagne, he had been confronted with a great holy tree that had been sacred to Thor, and he'd chopped it down and turned it into a church. But the thing about Boniface is he does this without mailed men at his back. He is doing it as someone who is not carrying weapons.
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And even though Boniface was sponsored by Charles Martel, he never turns to the Frankish warlord and says, can you give me some men? The whole point is that if you are confronted by armed warriors, then you allow them to cut you down. And this is what actually happens to Boniface. So in 754, he's hacked to death by Frisian pirates.
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The prayer book that he had in his hand in which he held up to try and stop the blow of the sword. gets cuts all the way through it and is preserved as a holy relic. And it's an example to Christians of how you should properly convert pagans. You shouldn't be going in and, you know, massacring them, burning villages and things.
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Yeah. And of course, unspoken is also the thought that, you know, you are going against God's will in doing this. And I agree, it is brave of Alcuin to do it. I mean, they may hang out in the baths and, you know, banter. But Charlemagne is still a very intimidating figure. But Alcuin does write to him. And what's amazing is that Charlemagne seems to have taken it on the chin.
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So that same year, 796, he orders the program of forcible baptisms to be eased. And then the following year, he issues a new charter for the Saxons, kind of easing off the prescriptions. I wouldn't say making the laws against paganism more liberal, that would have That would be an anachronistic way of putting it, but making them slightly less punitive, I guess.
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So Alcuin's take is that essentially you should rely on monasteries rather than on kind of military forts to pacify the Saxons. Charlemagne doesn't go that far. he continues to harry and burn and whatever.
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But I think there is a sense in which the monasteries that are built in the rear of the Saxons and which Charlemagne starts to plant over the eastern reaches of his kingdom, they have been compared by scholars to the great Roman legionary bases. These are centers of Christian power from which Christianity can reach outwards and spread eastwards.
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And in that sense, it kind of perfectly fuses the double meaning of correctio, this Latin word for, you know, bringing order where there's disorder. that it is a matter both for warriors with swords and for scholars and monks with pens. So there's this phrase, the Carolingian Renaissance.
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And to be honest, he's top guy in Europe because he has put the whole of the old heartlands of the Roman Empire in his shadow. And he is now pushing eastwards. And that, I think, excellent poem that you read by Paulinus, who in due course, as we said, will go on to become a saint. This is celebrating the conquest and the conversion of the Saxons. And these were a pagan people on the eastern flank.
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The Carolingians don't think that what they're doing is a Renaissance because they think that what they're doing is simply carrying on traditions that reach back to the Christian Roman Empire, but that things need to be corrected. And so that's what the program is all about. It's not a Renaissance. It's a program of correctio.
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and himself, which is why he had got Alcuin. He wanted a great teacher by his side. I think the reason for this, it's a bit like listeners may remember a while ago, we did an episode on Alfred. After Alfred's victories over the Vikings, his first aim is to restore the monasteries because he sees learning as fundamental to bringing his people to heaven, to winning them eternal life.
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That is his duty as king. If he doesn't do that, if he doesn't succeed in bringing the souls under his charge to Christ, then he will answer for it at the day of judgment. I think the same shadow hangs over Charlemagne. It's a really urgent, pressing mission for him. It is kind of education, education, education, but it's not just education for its own sake. It's about getting his people to heaven.
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That's why I think he's so keen on Alcuin, because he has inherited from his father Pepin and his grandfather Charles Martel a sense that actually the Anglo-Saxons are best at this kind of thing.
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So Boniface, when he had gone out to convert the pagans, he'd actually also had to work quite hard among the people on the eastern flank of the Frankish Empire, who supposedly had been Christian for centuries, because he finds that they're in a terrible state. So he writes of the Frankish clergy. They spend their lives in debauchery, adultery, and every kind of filth.
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And he's not writing that in any tone of jealousy.
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That's the first example, perhaps. And the other thing also that's very striking about Anglo-Saxon scholars when they come to Francia which was Gaul, a Roman province where people supposedly speak Latin. The Anglo-Saxon scholars have learned their Latin from books. they arrive in Gaul and they find the Latin being spoken by the Franks basically unintelligible.
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And the reason for that is that it's on the verge of becoming French. You know, it's evolving. But to Alcuin and his compadres, it's a sign that the Franks, you know, are hopelessly uneducated, that they've let their inheritance from the Romans slip and that therefore it's not just their morals that need improving, it's also their ability to speak Latin.
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That matters because to the Anglo-Saxons who had been converted by Roman missionaries, the association between Christianity and Romanitas is much stronger than it is among the Franks. We talked about this before. For the Franks, Christianity had always been Gallic, It had always been self-sufficient within Gaul. It hadn't looked to Rome for its example.
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But for the Anglo-Saxons, Rome is the great example. It's a Pope who converted them. And so the fact that it's an Anglo-Saxon like Alcuin who is in charge of the most significant monastery in Francia is really important in integrating Frankish notions of Christianity into a kind of Europe-wide understanding and making it Roman.
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So it's from this point onwards that you really start to have a kind of common Latin Christianity rather than one that is a Christianity that consists of multiple different versions of it. Right. You know, one in Rome, one in Gaul, one in wherever.
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of the Frankish Empire. Relations with the Franks had been terrible for ages and ages. They'd endlessly been raiding Frankish lands, licking their cattle, all that kind of stuff. This had been a grumbling cause of complaint under the Merovingians and then under the Carolingians. But Charlemagne, he's very much a guy for a radical solution.
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So the word Bible comes from the Greek word biblia, which means books. And Christian scriptures consist of lots of different books. And it had not previously been the habit to gather them within a single text. But Alcuin is all over this. There is a tradition of doing this, say, in the Northumbrian monasteries. And he brings this to Tor.
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And it's from this point on, really, that these collections of books, which are being assembled within the covers, you know, within a single set of covers, start to be known collectively as Biblia, i.e. a Bible. So it's from this point on that you start to get Bibles. And Alcuin's aim is to get as many of these Bibles out as he possibly can. And it's actually quite kind of information technology.
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There's a monk in Tor, he picks up one of these Bibles and he's amazed that you get all the different books of the Old Testament and the New Testament in a single text. And he kind of exclaims, this is a library beyond compare.
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And it's a bit like when iPhones or iPads or whatever first came out that people would say, you know, all the knowledge of the world is on this tiny little tablet, this tiny little phone.
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And Alcuin is quite Steve Jobs because he has a massive emphasis, not just on the volume of data, but also that this data, these books should be easy to use, easy to read, that they should be beautiful, that the production qualities should be completely streamlined. And so the Bibles and other books as well that are being produced in the scriptorium at Tor are
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are written to be as user-friendly as possible. And essentially, when you look at a block of text now written in the Roman script, so the script that English and French and German and everything uses, you are looking at a script that has been mediated by Carolingian scholars, by Alcuin and his fellow monks. So it's under Alcuin's guidance that for the first time, words don't run into one another.
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So if you think of a Roman inscription, you know, there's no spaces, but now you start to get spaces. Also the use of capitals to indicate new sentences. Again, a complete innovation. And my favorite innovation, the Carolingians start to introduce new punctuation marks.
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And in a sentence where there is doubt being expressed, they start to use a kind of lightning flash, which over the course of time will evolve to become the question mark. Wow. It's brilliant. So again, Alcuin, you know, he's all about the milk of doctrine and all that, but he also, he's the inventor of the Bible and the question mark.
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He's piling right in and saying, okay, I'm not going to put up with this. I'm going to conquer them. So he had gone to war against them in 772. So that's the year after he's become sole king. And this has lasted on and off for five years. And now it seems to Paulinus that Charlemagne has succeeded in his aims, that the Saxons are conquered. It's absolutely brilliant. And so he salutes Charlemagne.
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Yes, he's creating a common Christian culture. And of course, texts are for those who can read. So these Bibles are kind of going to monasteries or whatever. But Charlemagne and Alcuin are both very, very concerned to reach out into the countryside. So people may wonder, it's a long time since Clovis was converted. The Frankish elites, the aristocracy, all of that are clearly very, very Christian.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
But what about the peasants out in the countryside? What do they know about it? Probably very little. Yeah. And these are the people that Charlemagne is also very, very concerned to reach. And the key people here are the parish priests. And Boniface had complained about the fact that they're hopeless, they don't know anything.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And Alcuin also actually says he worries that the priests, they don't really know what they're talking about. And so again, he devises kind of little books, little format books that can be slipped into a pouch or something. that give the basics of Christian doctrine, give the Lord's Prayer, give the Creed, give various key passages from Scripture or whatever.
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These are sent out into the parishes, out into the countryside. It's an unprecedented experiment in the West in mass education. Within a few decades, the bishops in Francia are able to assume that priests should have a basic modicum of knowledge.
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And in fact, there's this wonderful account of a priest in about the kind of the 840s who gets imprisoned by his bishop for having forgotten everything that he had learned, which always kind of sticks in my mind. Wow. I mean, if you got punished for forgetting everything you'd learned. that would be a real problem.
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And this again, it's hard to emphasize how significant a moment this is in the history of Western Europe, because this is the moment when the process of Christianization really starts to happen. It's not just for the elites anymore. It's reaching out into the whether it's kind of annual or whether it's from cradle to grave, are starting to be marinated in Christianity.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
So if you're drawing up a charter, a legal agreement, if you're tending to a sick animal, if you're working out where you should dig a well, when you should begin the harvest? All of these questions are starting to be framed in Christian terms by priests who have been given the kind of intellectual know-how and ammunition that enables them to do this.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
Yeah, and Charlemagne has prescribed that every priest should know the Lord's Prayer and should know the Creed, and that they should in turn instruct everybody in his kingdom in the Creed and in the Lord's Prayer. And so that is giving to people kind of fundamentals of familiarity with Christianity that they hadn't previously had. And it has a kind of saturating effect.
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The consequences of that are utterly profound for the future of European culture. It means that people start to take for granted assumptions that are rooted in Christianity to the point where they don't even realize where these assumptions have come from. And I think it's in this sense that you can call Charlemagne the father of Europe.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
So this is a phrase that is being applied to him within his own lifetime. I mean, in all kinds of ways, it's a ridiculous thing to call him because as we will see, his empire actually doesn't last very long. But I think in this one sense, the Christianization of people out in the reaches of the countryside, he does deserve that title.
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But of course, Dominic, father of Europe is not the only title that he will end up with.
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May God grant the Clement Prince as his reward for achieving such a victory, the sweet pastures of eternal life. It's all looking good.
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Are you a fan of The Rest Is History, but yet to dive into the weird and wonderful world of The Rest Is History Club? Or is there someone dear to you who won't stop banging on about the show?
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If the history buff in your life is always regaling you with the same old facts about Churchill or Napoleon, why not get him or her, and let's face it, you, a present?
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
It is packed to the brim with the most bizarre historical questions you never thought to ask, like what was the most disastrous party in history? Which British politician plotted to feed his lover to an alligator? And why was a Brazilian emperor mistaken for a banana?
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
It's just that he is more impressive and he has more resources to draw on. Therefore, he can behave in a way that hasn't been seen in Western Europe for a very long time. Peter Brown, the great historian of late antiquity, says of Charlemagne that he was not a warrior chieftain in a fragile, epic mode. He trod with the heavy tread of a dominus, so a Roman lord, a lord of Roman determination,
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capable of deploying resources on an almost Roman scale. And these resources are preeminently military because he has inherited from Pepin and from his grandfather, Charles Martel, by far the most menacing war machine in Europe. But he adds to that some very, very kind of distinctive personal qualities. So in the previous episode, we heard from Einhard, who was this very short scholar who
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who wrote a biography of Charlemagne. And Einhard summed up Charlemagne as having two particularly striking character traits. He said that he had greatness of soul and a constant firmness of mind.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And I guess you could, if you were not as prone to praising Charlemagne as Einhard was, you could say that these qualities correspond perhaps to having very broad horizons, a capacity to see things on a very large scale, and also a capacity to take a very, very long view. And to Einhard, these qualities remind him of perhaps the greatest of all Roman emperors, who is Augustus.
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524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)
And this is why Einhard models his biography on Suetonius' biography of Augustus. And there is something Roman about the approach that Charlemagne takes to the Saxons. So anyone who knows how the Romans behaved to the Germans, or indeed to the Gauls when they conquered them, they are murderous in their response to perceived slights or insults.
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And certainly Charlemagne's policy of outright conquest, we've got these kind of fractious barbarians, let's go and conquer them and pacify them. That is a very Roman approach. And there's an account from a chronicler describing Charlemagne's early campaigns against the Saxons. And it will sound to people, I think,
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like the historians of Rome describing the onslaught of the legionaries against the barbarian people. So this chronicler writes, Charles devastated the lands of the Saxons with fire and sword and left them emptied of people. And when he targets a particularly celebrated Saxon shrine, he's described as destroying it utterly and taking away all the gold and silver he found there.
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And I think even when we say the Saxons, that again is a Frankish formulation that reflects the tendency that the Romans had, which was to kind of perceive pagan peoples, tribal peoples, peoples on the fringes of their civilization in terms that they would understand. And of course, that's what the Romans had done to the Franks.
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And now the Franks are doing it to these people that they kind of bundle together as Saxons.
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I think he does. I mean, not actually to Augustus, but to the Christian emperors who had ruled a great Christian realm. And of course, that is one point of difference between Charlemagne and Augustus, is that Charlemagne is not just a great conqueror, but he is a Christian conqueror. And there's a kind of quality of paradox to that, because there hasn't really been such a figure before.
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So when he advances into the lands of the Saxons, he's not aiming just to conquer them. He wants to save their souls. He wants to bring them to Christ. And this great shrine that I described Charlemagne as destroying in 772, it's not just that it's rich. It's obviously the fact that it is a pagan shrine. It's flamboyant. fearsome. It's phallic.
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It's basically a massive great pole sticking up out of the Saxon earth, famed across Saxony and believed by the Saxons to uphold the very heavens themselves. Charlemagne chops it down to demonstrate that this isn't true, that it has no sacral potency whatsoever. I guess even the looting of its treasures can be justified in terms of what churchmen in Charlemagne's realm
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are coming to describe as a process of correctio. It's a Latin word which means the bringing of order where there is disorder, burnishing what has been besmeared and besmirched. Can I, at this point, quote for myself from Millennium? Do. This program, here was a program to whet the ambitions of warlords as well as scholars.
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And to send men into battle beneath the fluttering of banners, the hiss of arrows, and the shadow of carrion crows, quite as much as into the mildewed quiet of libraries.
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You can see that he's been a great influence on me. prose. But there is this idea that Charlemagne cleaves to very, very passionately that in bringing sword and fire to the lands of the Saxons, he is also bringing order. And essentially, it's all for their own good. It's all for their own benefit.
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Well, in the previous episode, we heard how the Pope in Rome had anointed Charlemagne's father, thereby providing him with the religious legitimacy that he wanted. So it's become very important to the Carolingians. The papacy basically has licensed them to become kings. So a very important figure. But he's been menaced by the Lombards.
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And essentially, the quid pro quo between the Carolingians and the papacy is that the Pope will anoint kings and all that kind of stuff. And meanwhile, the Carolingians are expected to keep the Lombards, who are these very impotent people in the north of Italy, keep them on a kind of tight leash.
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And Charlemagne, whose ambitions are clearly considerable in a way that not even his father's had been, even when he's in Saxony, is thinking about what could I do against the Lombards. Maybe I could just swallow up their kingdom. When he strips this great pagan shrine of all its treasure, I think he is thinking, this is great. I can use this to essentially fund a war against the Lombards.
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He will need it because the Lombards occupy a stretch of land that is dotted, as you said, with ancient Roman cities that have walls that are impressive. The Lombards are a kingdom a bit like the Franks. I mean, on a smaller scale, but kind of a challenge of a different order to the Saxons. And they're also Germanic. Is that right? The Lombards? They are Germanic. They command the Alpine passes.
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So that's a potential problem. And there is also bad blood between Charlemagne and the Lombard king, who's a man called Desiderius, because Charlemagne had been married to the daughter of Desiderius for a year and then basically had dumped her. I think for diplomatic reasons rather than personal reasons, because he needed to marry someone else from Central Europe.
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Well, I think that is probably actually the biggest consideration of all, because Charlemagne knows that the one thing that could really cripple his offensive capacity and the integrity of his empire is kind of factional rivalry with rival members of his own family.
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And we know that this is weighing on his mind because we have a life of Hadrian I, who's become Pope shortly after Charlemagne's come to power. And in this biography, it says that the wife and sons of the late Carloman king of the Franks had taken refuge with Desidius, who was trying hard to make good his contention that these princes should assume the kingship of the Franks.
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in the hope of stirring up dissensions in the kingdom of the Franks. And in fact, Desiderius writes to the Pope and says, look, I've got these two boys, crown them, anoint them, give them your legitimacy. Hadrian refuses because he essentially has to weigh up which of these two guys is likelier to win. And he decides that Charlemagne is the likelier.
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But he's still in an awkward position because Desiderius is between him and Charlemagne. And in fact, when Hadrian sends a messenger to Charlemagne saying, you know, please come to my rescue, I'm being menaced. He can't actually use the Alpine passes because they've been shut off. And so he has to send the messenger via Marseille, which then goes up to Charlemagne. And...
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When Charlemagne gets this message, it confirms his worst anxieties, essentially that Desiderius will be using these two nephews to strike at him. And so he thinks, okay, I've got to go to war. So the summer of 773, Charles summons his peers, his warriors, his advisors to Geneva, in Switzerland, holds a great council there. He wants to get the support of his followers for the war that's to come.
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And then having got that, he advances southwards. He seizes control of the two main mountain passes over the Alps. And once he's done that, he then sends ambassadors to Desiderius. And you can see what his main target is, because even at this point, His prime anxiety is to get hold of the nephews.
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And he says to Desiderius, look, I am willing to hold off war and I'm willing to pay you a frankly enormous amount of money if you will hand these boys over to me. And Desiderius refuses. And Charlemagne, I think, is really quite surprised by this. Janet Nelson, in her brilliant biography of Charlemagne, offers an explanation for why Desiderius should have refused Charlemagne's offer.
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She writes, Charles underestimated one thing that was beyond price, the Lombard king's honour. What father does deals with the man who has repudiated his daughter?
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Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com.
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
Perhaps the interpretation of the Quran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Muhammad. From such calamities was Christendom delivered, by the genius and fortune of one man.
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
Right, so Char Martel, although there is a Merovingian king, we don't need to really worry too much about him. He's called Theuderic IV.
The Rest Is History
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But Char Martel is the ruler of huge swathes of what was once Gaul, Austrasia, Neustria, Burgundy, and so on. But that leaves one other place in the southeast of France, which is Aquitaine. and Aquitaine stands against Charles Martel. Is that right? And this is going to be very important for our story of the Battle of Tours. So Aquitaine has got a duke called Odo, or Odo. Let's call him Odo.
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So tell me about him. He's a very grizzled, experienced bloke.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
Charles, the illegitimate son of the elder Pepin, was content with the titles of Mayor or Duke of the Franks, but he deserved to become the father of a line of kings. That was Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most famous passages of historical prose ever written.
The Rest Is History
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And they are launching raids all the time northwards as far as Burgundy, right?
The Rest Is History
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Can I just stop you right there? So a lot of listeners may find that really interesting because that obviously undermines the idea that this is a sort of titanic clash of civilizations and that people are consciously engaged in a clash of civilizations. Because here you have an alliance between Christian and, in inverted commas, Muslim and a marriage alliance along with that.
The Rest Is History
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So there's no sense that they've crossed some kind of tremendous ideological divide in doing that.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
He is describing the legacy of the Battle of Tor, which was fought on the 10th of October 732, or perhaps 733, nobody is entirely sure. between the Franks and what he called an invading force of Saracens. So Tom, great passage, great book, great subject. Just bring some of it alive for us. So who is Charles? Who are the Saracens? Where are we and what's going on?
The Rest Is History
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Okay, so what will happen? Will they strip it bare? Will there be a great battle? Who knows? Come back after the break and find out.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
Head to Blinds.com now for up to 40% off select styles plus a free professional measure.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
Rules and restrictions may apply. In this year, two comets appeared around the Sun, striking great terror into those that saw them. One went before the Sun, rising in the morning. The other followed it, sinking in the evening, as if foreboding dire calamity for East as well as West.
The Rest Is History
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Certainly, one anticipated the day's beginning and the other the night's, so that they might act as a sign that evils threatened mortals at both times. They bore a fiery torch to the north as if to start a fire. They appeared in the month of January and remained for nearly two weeks. At that time, a very serious plague of Saracens plundered the Gauls with miserable slaughter.
The Rest Is History
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So that was the venerable Bede, writing in the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Now Bede, not brilliant at dates, to be fair to him. He said this happened in 729.
The Rest Is History
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He's at least three years out here. Probably. So he dated the comets to 729, but there wasn't any Saracen invasion of Gorn in 729. Most scholars think he's got in a muddle and he's actually talking about 732. Which is a bit odd because he actually claimed that he finished his book a year earlier. So maybe he put this in afterwards.
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Saladin in the Ladybug.
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
I was about to say, it's one where the limbs of the bow kind of curve away. So it's a sort of more elaborate curve. Yeah. So they kind of curl back on themselves. Like a horn, almost.
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Yeah, Arabian Night kind of bow. And because of that, because of the extra sort of tension or whatever, you can have a shorter bow. So in other words, it's easier to fire when you're on horseback.
The Rest Is History
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So it's a bit like the images of fighting that you get in Bernard Cornwell's books, which are, again, not a massively dissimilar period. People packed in a kind of shield wall, stabbing with their swords relentlessly through the gaps in the enemy line.
The Rest Is History
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Kind of impassable, immovable, indomitable.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
So that's it. The invaders, the raiders have been beaten off and they've vanished with their stuff because they don't want to lose their, what plunder they've already gained.
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But what it isn't is a long-planned, cold-blooded, coordinated, massive invasion. No. It's not that.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
The one thing I would say is if they have that, they have to keep supplying it with men and whatnot from beyond the Pyrenees, which does look like a pretty significant natural barrier through most of history between France and Spain.
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You've made a massive leap in the course of a sentence from they'd probably got Aquitaine to suddenly Italy has fallen as well. Like your dominoes are falling very quickly.
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And this is an argument that people made particularly in the 19th and early 20th century, isn't it? That the Battle of Tours, if it was fought in 732, was one of the genuinely pivotal moments when history might have gone differently. That had the Franks lost to the Saracens...
The Rest Is History
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Which is so common. That's what Christians think of them in the early years of Islam, isn't it?
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
then Islam, the advance of the Arab armies would have continued up into France and that the entire course of European and world history might have been different. And in fact, all Europe might have fallen within the kind of Islamic world. And people genuinely made that argument very vigorously, among them Adolf Hitler, right?
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Are there not some other reasons why you could question the idea about the momentousness of this battle? So, for example, the Mayad Chronicles often mention big defeats. So they mentioned defeats in the early stages of the Reconquista, for example, but they never mentioned this at all. Like it doesn't even feature.
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They treat it as a raid that just, you know, just one raid among many and beaten back. I looked this up. There were more raids in 734. There was a raid in 736. And there was actually, some people think, an even bigger raid, even bigger invasion in 739. when the Umayyads got to Burgundy, only to be beaten back by the Franks. So in other words, this was not the end of their incursions.
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So in that sense, it's not really a turning point. It doesn't change anything because they just keep coming.
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But there's one other thing which is even more important, which I think is arguably much more important than the Battle of Tours, and that's in 740, a huge revolt breaks out in what's now Morocco, Great Berber Revolt. And that basically cuts off Umayyad Spain from the sort of Arab heartland.
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
It means that the age of raiding kind of comes to an end because they can't keep raising all the, you know, there's so much internal dissension and the Emirates can't keep raising all these Berber troops.
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
So that would seem to undermine the idea that, oh, they get Akutay and then they get this and they get this and they get this because actually they've got so many problems in their own kind of backyard, as it were, that they were actually never going to be able to do all that because of the massive ructions going on in North Africa.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
All right, well, if people want to listen to that, we've got an episode on Umayyad Spain, which I greatly recommend. But for the time being, we're going to be going on with the story of the Franks, right, Tom? So what's coming up next?
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
Brilliant. So next up is our Charlemagne trilogy, one of the most epic stories we've ever done on The Rest Is History. Now, the good news, if you're a member of The Rest Is History Club, is that you should have all three parts of that trilogy right now.
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
Now, if you're not a member of the club and you'd like to get your hands on them, all you need to do is head to therestishistory.com and sign up and you can have that Charlemagne trilogy straight away. If not, I'm afraid you'll just have to wait. See you then. Bye bye. Bye bye.
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
Well, here is a reminder that we at therestishistory.com offer gift memberships. So if you're good at dropping hints or if you're short on a present for a family member, for a friend or for a partner, Tom and I would like to remind you of the ultimate Christmas stocking filler. And it is, of course, a subscription to the Rest Is History Club, which is full to the brim with bonus episodes.
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
It's got access to the much-loved Discord chat community. It's got newsletters. It's got all kinds of goodies. Simply go to therestishistory.com and look for gifts.
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
We do. So we often say we've got exciting news, but this is genuinely very, very exciting news. We are thrilled to announce that after the sellout show that we did earlier this year, The Rest Is History will be returning to the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday, the 4th of May to perform live once again with an orchestra.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
So that first show that we did this year was a truly glorious experience. And we are hoping that this, too, will be an unforgettable night. There'll be great music. We'll be telling great stories. We'll be delving into the history. So you had better get your hands on tickets for the show as soon as you can.
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
That is the Rest Is History live with the Philharmonia Orchestra Tchaikovsky and Wagner. It's at the Royal Albert Hall on Sunday the 4th of May. Now, the tickets are available for members on Wednesday the 18th of December and for the general public on Thursday the 19th of December. And please make sure that you don't miss it.
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After all, Christmas is just around the corner. And a very happy coincidence, our first official Rest Is History book is now out as the perfect stocking-sized paperback.
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It's sure to make the festive period much more entertaining for all involved, and it is available in bookshops everywhere now.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
But this is not what the vast majority of historical scholars now think, is it? Most agree now that the Battle of Tours was massively overblown. It was kind of a propaganda victory above all else, partly because the Arabs are not trying to launch a massive invasion of what was once Gaul. It's a raid, one among many that they launch.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
And the consequences are perhaps not as great as is often thought.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
I do think when you read an academic on the Battle of Tor, academics who say, oh, it's a terribly important moment, it's a pivotal moment in world civilization, a battle that changed everything, they always do tend to be of a very particular political persuasion.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
All right. Well, let's start with the Arabs. So Gibbon calls them Saracens, which is not a word that you often hear these days. But actually, they're not really Arabs, are they? Most of that army are almost certainly Berbers from North Africa, from what we'd once have called Mauritania, or probably a lot of them from Spain. So they're not Arabs. And actually, are they even Muslims?
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522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
Because, of course, at this point, Islam is still in the process of kind of being formed, isn't it, to some degree?
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
It's a raiding party and not, I guess, totally unlike Scandinavian raiding party in a not massively dissimilar period.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
So now beyond that is the land of the Franks. And that's the kingdom we talked about last week. It's ruled by the Merovingian dynasty. We left it with Clothar II. He's won his victory over Brunhild and he's basically got a monarchy over the whole of what was once the Roman territory of Gaul.
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
So all the different kingdoms are now acknowledging him as their, all the different bits rather, are now acknowledging him as their king. But I read that the seeds of the Merovingian's downfall had already been sown. It's
The Rest Is History
522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the Rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire. The repetition of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the highlands of Scotland. The Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates. and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames.