or pickaxe in hand. The king was far away, the lord close at hand. Hence the sixty years of terror and confusion which came between Charlemagne and the death of Charles the Bald suppressed the direct authority of the king in favour of the nobles, and prepared the way for a second destruction of the monarchy at the hands of a stronger power (see Feudalism).
Before long Charles the Bald’s followers were dictating to
him; and in the disaffection caused by his feebleness and
cowardice prelates and nobles allied themselves
against him. If they acknowledged the king’s authority
at the assemblies of Yütz (near Thionville) in 844,
Establishment
of feudalism.
they forced from him a promise that they should keep
their fiefs and their dignities; and while establishing a right of
control over all his actions they deprived him of his right of
jurisdiction over them. Despite Charles’s resistance his royal
power dwindled steadily: an appeal to Hincmar, archbishop of
Reims, entailed concessions to the Church. In 856 some of his
vassals deserted him and went over to Louis the German. To
win them back Charles had to sign a new charter, by the terms
of which loyalty was no longer a one-sided engagement but
a reciprocal contract between king and vassal. He gave up his
personal right of distributing the fiefs and honours which were
the price of adherence, and thus lost for the Carolingians the free
disposal of the immense territories they had gradually usurped;
they retained the over-lordship, it is true, but this over-lordship,
without usufruct and without choice of tenant, was but a
barren possession.
Like their territories public authority little by little slipped from the grasp of the Carolingians, largely because of their abuse of their too great power. They had concentrated the entire administration in their own hands. Like Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald Decay of the Carolinglan power. were omnipotent. There were no provincial assemblies, no municipal bodies, no merchant-gilds, no autonomous churches; the people had no means of making themselves heard; they had no place in an administration which was completely in the hands of a central hierarchy of officials of all ranks, from dukes to scabini, with counts, viscounts and centenarii in between. However, these dukes and counts were not merely officials: they too had become lords of fideles, of their own advocati, centenarii and scabini, whom they nominated, and of all the free men of the county, who since Charlemagne’s time had been first allowed and then commanded to “commend” themselves to a lord, receiving feudal benefices in return. Any deprivation or supersession of the count might impoverish, dispossess or ruin the vassals of the entire county; so that all, vassals or officials, small and great, feeling their danger, united their efforts, and lent each other mutual assistance against the permanent menace of an overweening monarchy. Hence, at the end of the 9th century, the heredity of offices as well as of fiefs. In the disordered state of society official stability was a valuable warrant of peace, and the administrative hierarchy, lay or spiritual, thus formed a mould for the hierarchy of feudalism. There was no struggle with the king, simply a cessation of obedience; for without strength or support in the kingdom he was powerless to resist. In vain Charles the Bald affirmed his royal authority in the capitularies of Quierzy-sur-Oise (857), Reims (860), Pistes (864), Gondreville (872) and Quierzy-sur-Oise (877); each time in exchange for assent to the royal will and renewal of oaths he had to acquiesce in new safeguards against himself and by so much to diminish that power of protection against violence and injustice for which the weak had always looked to the throne. Far from forbidding the relation of lord and vassal, Charles the Bald imposed it upon every man in his kingdom, himself proclaiming the real incapacity and failure of that theoretic royal power to which he laid claim. Henceforward royalty had no servants, since it performed no service. There was no longer the least hesitation over the choice between liberty with danger and subjection with safety; men sought and found in vassalage the right to live, and willingly bartered away their liberty for it.
The degeneration of the monarchy was clearly apparent on the death of Charles the Bald, when his son, Louis the Stammerer, was only assured of the throne, which had passed by right of birth under the Merovingians and been hereditary under the earlier Carolingians, through his Louis the Stammerer (877–879). election by nobles and bishops under the direction of Hugh the Abbot, successor of Robert the Strong, each voter having been won over by gift of abbeys, counties or manors. When Louis died two years later (879), the same nobles met, some at Creil, the rest at Meaux, and the first party chose Louis of Germany, who preferred Lorraine to the crown; while the rest anointed Louis III. and Carloman, sons of the late king, themselves deciding how the kingdom was Louis III. and Carloman (879–884). to be divided between the two princes. Thus the king no longer chose his own vassals; but vassals and fief-holders actually elected their king according to the material advantages they expected from him. Louis III. and Carloman justified their election by their brilliant victories over the Normans at Saucourt (881) and near Epernay (883); but at their deaths (882–884), the nobles, instead of taking Louis’s boy-son, Charles the Simple, as king, chose Charles the Fat, king of Germany, because he was emperor and seemed Charles the Fat. (884–888.) powerful. He united once more the dominions of Charlemagne; but he disgraced the imperial throne by his feebleness, and was incapable of using his immense army to defend Paris when it was besieged by the Normans. Expelled from Italy, he only came to France to buy a shameful peace. When he died in January 888 he had not a single faithful vassal, and the feudal lords resolved never again to place the sceptre in a hand that could not wield the sword.
The death-struggle of the Carolingians lasted for a century of uncertainty and anarchy, during which time the bishops, counts and lords might well have suppressed the monarchy had they been hostile to it. Such, however, was not their policy; on the contrary, they needed a Death-struggle of the Carolingians (888–987). king to act as agent for their private interests, since he alone could invest their rank and dignities with an official and legitimate character. They did not at once agree on Charles’s successor; for some of them chose Eudes (Odo), son of Robert the Strong, for his brilliant defence of Paris against the Normans in 885; others Guy, duke of Spoleto in Italy, who had himself crowned at Langres; while many wished for Arnulf, illegitimate son of Carloman, king of Germany and emperor. Eudes was victor in the struggle, and was crowned and anointed at Compiègne on the 29th of February 888; but five years later, meeting with defeat after defeat at the hands of the Normans, his followers deserted from him to Charles the Simple, grandson of Charles the Bald, who was also supported by Fulk, archbishop of Reims.
This first Carolingian restoration took place on the 28th of January 893, and thenceforward throughout this warlike period from 888 to 936 the crown passed from one dynasty to the other according to the interests of the nobles. After desperate strife, an agreement between the two King Odo (888–893). rivals, Arnulf’s support, and the death of Odo, secured it for Charles III., surnamed the Simple. His subjects remained faithful to him for a good while, as he put an end to the Norman invasions which had desolated the kingdom for two centuries, and cowed those barbarians, much to the benefit of France. By the treaty of St Clair-sur-Epte (911) their leader Rolf (Rollo) obtained one of Charles’s daughters in marriage and the district of the Lower Seine which the Normans had long occupied, on condition that he and his men ceased their attacks and accepted Christianity. Having thus tranquillized the west, Charles the Simple (893–929). Charles took advantage of Louis the Child’s death, and conquered Lorraine, in spite of opposition from Conrad, king of Germany (921). But his preference for his new conquest, and for a Lorrainer of low birth named Hagano, aroused the jealousy and discontent of his nobles. They first elected Robert, count of Paris (923), and then after his death in a successful battle near Soissons against Charles the
