Few of us can recall any of the shadowy figures who populate the so-called "Dark Ages" of the period between the fall of Rome in 476 and the Norman conquest. If we do recall anyone, it tends to be either King Arthur or Charlemagne. What we recall from stories and school lessons may be factual but brief, or it may be something out of those old story-books. They are great fun; they are of course not much good as history. The few lines we get in school don't tell much, either, since survey courses just skim the surface.

     While King Arthur may be important mainly in terms of literary inspiration, Charlemagne is not only a clearly defined historical figure, but an extremely important one as well. Not for nothing did the Belgians put his portrait on an écu-denominated coin in 1991, being devoted to European unity, of which he was the first major exponent.

     With Charles the Great (Karolus Magnus or Charlemagne) we reach one of those crossroads in history, when the entire course of events is forever changed. Under his auspices Europe subtly changed from a Germanic tribal society to a continent of separate but linked nations, although the Franks of his day would not have seen it that way.

     To look at the situation it helps to look at the origins of this family. The earliest note of the antecedents of this ancestor of all of Europe - both in the figurative and literal sense, for it is all but certain that all persons of any European ancestry could in theory trace their ancestry to Charlemagne in several lines - involve a

family alliance between Arnulf, bishop of Metz, and Pepin, called the Old, around the year 600. Both were the heads of noble, rich families; both were devoid of notable ancestors. They were emphatically "new men". Clovis himself had been baptized only a century earlier; in the kingdom of the Franks even the king was a new man.

     This Arnulf was married, and had a son - clerical celibacy wasn't such an ironclad rule in those days - and this son married the daughter of Pepin. Both of these nobles were important military figures, as well. They supported King Chlotar against his rivals, and he rewarded them accordingly. Arnulf gained his bishopric, which happened to be in the Merovingian capitol. From their great power bases these families grew to command the kingdom, first that of Austrasia - roughly the north of France and into Germany - and, later, to bring Neustria, the rest of France based at Paris, into line.

     Arnulf retired to a monastery in 629, leaving Pepin as the commander of the allies. He had to deal with opposition, of course, as other families had the same idea. At this point the king, Dagobert II, still counted for something. He, trying to play the factions against each other, did his best to keep Pepin's ambitions in check. On his death in 639 Pepin moved quickly and became entrenched in power, only to die himself in 640.

     Pepin's son Grimoald ruled in the name of his overlord with an iron hand until the death of Sigebert II in 656. In that year he tried to get his own son installed as king, and failed miserably. This son lasted for a very short while before dying, with his father, at the hands of rivals. The next few years saw a turmoil of plots and counterplots, assassinations and vendettas, and a series of battles, culminating in that of Tertry in 687, where Pepin II, "of Herstal", defeated his Neustrian rivals. A notable warlord, he excelled as a diplomat, and very quickly had set up a web of alliances among all but the most hostile of clans. He had the power to appoint the kings, and used it to ensure that none of them could threaten him.

     Pepin's tenure of office as "mayor of the palace" was notable for many things. Perhaps the most lasting, other than his consolidation of power, was the dispatch of Willibrord to Christianize the newly conquered Frisian territories. The conquest was the result of Pepin's loss of patience with Frisian raids on Frankish territory, and it proved to have the result of bringing the Netherlands into the sphere of the Church, and under Frankish influence.

Silver Denier of Massalia, Patrician Nemphidius, c. 700 AD, Lot 418.

     Pepin had several sons, not all legitimate. The most notable, Karl or Charles, was passed over for any significant power; Pepin's named heir was a child under his mother's regency. To the other nobility this seemed the perfect time to supplant these tyrants, and so they did their best. Charles, regarded with suspicion by the regent Plectrude, soon set up on his own. The Neustrians rebelled and attacked. They chased Plectrude out, but on the way back Charles, named "Martel", the Hammer, gave them a good pounding. At Vichy in 717 he gave them an even better beating, and while he hadn't the strength to invade Neustria, nobody could challenge him in Austrasia. Eventually the Neustrians tried to attack him again; this time he crushed them so completely that he was able to control the entire kingdom.

     Charles accomplished two things of note during his reign. First, he united the kingdom, and second, he defeated an invading Spanish Arab army at Poitiers, in 732. While the significance of this battle has been much debated - with opinions ranging from "the salvation of Europe" to "brushing away a raiding party" - nonetheless the Muslim armies made few further attempts. Both of these proved important in the years which followed.

Pepin le Bref.

     Charles's son, another Pepin, called le Bref, "the Short", inherited part along with his brother Carloman. The latter decided to retire to a monastery near Rome, and Pepin had little sentiment to waste on his heirs, whose claims he brushed aside. He made the substance of power into the form as well, and succeeded where Grimoald failed. He asked the Pope a simple question: whether he should be king who had the royal power, or he who merely had the title without the power. Pope Zacharias wanted allies against the Lombards; Pepin wanted a crown, so they struck a deal. The Frankish nobility generally went along, and although one or two families objected they did not do so for long. Accordingly, Pepin achieved his desire in 751. Pepin, in return, promised a donation of land to the Papacy, and the land was to be take from Lombard "usurpation". Pepin in fact did little, but the "Donation of Pepin", which unlike that attributed to Constantine was not bogus, laid the foundation for the Papal States, which in turn did much to keep the Papacy from becoming merely a tool of whatever emperor ruled in Italy, however ineffective individual Popes were.

     Pepin died in 768, leaving his throne and lands to be divided between his two sons: Charles, the elder (later Charlemagne), and Carloman. Almost at once strife between the two made itself felt. The Aquitanians, whose desire for total independence was never more than temporarily quiescent, made another bid, and Charles in his capacity as king was forced to respond. He asked Carloman for assistance; the latter decided himself to assert independence, and refused. Charles had dealt with the Aquitanians before, and his reconquest this time was no different, but the cause of family unity was not exactly strengthened. When Carloman died, in 771 - brothers of Frankish kings, it seems, tended to have short lives - Charles had little difficulty in absorbing his realm.

     For the next several years Charles fought wars which were mainly intended to relieve pressure on his borders. The alliance between the house of Pepin and the Papacy brought on another series of wars. In 772 a new Pope, Hadrian, came to the chair of Peter and had to face the growing ambition of Desiderius, king of the Lombards. Charles, married to one of the king's daughters, might not have seemed the most promising ally, but Charles wasn't exactly smitten with anything Lombard, including the daughter, described rather uncharitably in later sources as more than slightly deformed. This seems unlikely; the real reasons are to be found in the Lombards' alliances with anti-Charles factions, from Tassilo of Bavaria to Carloman's heirs.

     The war in Italy went smoothly enough; the only difficulty was the nine-month siege of the Lombard capitol, Pavia, which surrendered in 774. This eliminated the Lombard threat once and for all, although other problems remained. In 787 these problems caused sufficient annoyance for Charlemagne to campaign in the south, against Beneventum and Spoleto. Nominally under Byzantine control, and harboring Lombard refugees and claimants, when Byzantine authority waned under the rule of Irene these duchies invited invasion. Charlemagne "came, saw and conquered", but they were too far from Frank-land for Charles to hold, so he set them up as vassal states. They remained that way despite rebellions and other troubles until the collapse of the empire.

     In Germany, where the old pagan Germanic tribal system still held sway, the Frankish lands invited unfriendly visits. The Saxons, in response to pressures further east, raided Frankish Germany in the best Germanic tradition. Charles determined to put a stop to this marauding; it took him thirty years, but Saxony was conquered, converted and pacified for good in 804. The series of wars - Saxony was nominally pacified in 772, but the key word is "nominally" - continued as almost annual events, with the Saxons defeated in all major battles but able to escape because of inadequate Frankish logistics - finally brought under control through garrisons, mass deportations and diplomacy. The result of all this hard work was to bring the Franks into conflict with new enemies further east.

     The West provided its share of occupation as well. Good crusader that he was, Charlemagne welcomed an opportunity to deal with his southern enemies, the Ummayad emirs in Spain. As they were near and hostile Charles made common cause with another Muslim ruler, the 'Abbasid caliph in Baghdad; they had, after all, two common enemies in Cordova and Byzantium. Charles marched with his army to the assistance of certain rebellious elements in Barcelona in 778. The expedition was a failure due to squabbles among the Muslims, and Charlemagne went home in disgust. The Frankish army was attacked by Basques at Roncesvales on the way through the Pyrenees; the rearguard was destroyed. A disaster for the Franks, indeed, although as it turned out a great benefit for later poets; the end result was the Chanson de Roland, which is fictional history but marvelous literature.

Charlemagne. "Obol" of Ravenna. Lot 420.

     Meanwhile Charles realized the problems which he faced in Aquitaine and along the Pyrenees, and took steps to correct them. He set up his son Louis, later Emperor, in a dependent kingdom of Aquitaine, and Louis expanded into Spain. The Muslims mounted a massive raid in 793, but despite this they were very much on the defensive thereafter, and the Basques themselves felt the weight of Louis's sword on more than one occasion.

     The other major war in this period was the campaign against the Avars, in what is now Hungary. These Avars, persistently called "Huns" in the source texts, of whom they were close relatives, carried out cavalry raids from a base in the Danube area. Their fortified base, the "Ring", so called from the nine concentric walls of fortification which defended it, was supposed to be impregnable. They liked to raid Frankish territories, and they liked to support Charles's enemies, so Charles moved against them.

     Charles's first expedition, in 791, cleared most of present-day Austria of the Avars but ended in failure due to an outbreak of horse plague. The Avars might have believed themselves safe, as Charles had other things to occupy his time, but his son Pepin of Italy, delegated with the task, succeeded admirably, In 793 he gave those in the "Ring" a taste of their own medicine; in 795 he forced them to swallow the entire prescription, capturing the "Ring" along with the khagan himself and fifteen wagon-loads of treasure.

     Of course, once again, all this did in the end was to exchange old enemies for new. The Saxons and Avars were humbled; even Charlemagne could not get at the Bulgars and the other Baltic Slavs, for example, and the Vikings (the term is derived from vik, "bay" or "inlet", or perhaps the quintessential Vik itself, the Oslofjord) continued to raid and rob almost at will. The nominal submission of the Danes accomplished little, and the bans on the exports of weapons to Scandinavia served mainly to encourage native industry there.

     By the end of the eighth century the tide of conquest was nearly at its peak. Major campaigning ceased with the final subjugation of Saxony in 804 (although by the 790s this was simply a matter of time). Apart from a campaign in Brittany in 811, which accomplished nothing of note, the energies of Charlemagne after 800 were primarily harnessed toward consolidation of what had been won rather than in winning new lands.

Charlemagne. Denier of Toulouse. Lot 419.

     The best-known, and at the same time most obscure, event of the reign was the unprecedented Christmas present given by pope Leo. This is, of course, the coronation of Charles as Emperor, something which Einhard tells us was far from agreeable to him. The coronation came about as the result of a series of unusual events, as important occurrences often do, and it had consequences lasting through the nineteenth century.

     The first of these events was the situation in the "legitimate" Roman empire, in Constantinople. The emperor Leo V died in 780, leaving a child of ten as his heir and an ambitious widow as regent. A Greek, from Athens, Irene worked to reverse the iconoclast policy of her late husband, and once again the empire found itself in renewed conflicts. The result of the Council of Nicaea, in 787, merely drove the iconoclast faction to plot, and their rallying point was the young emperor, Constantine VI. As Irene was interested in sole rule herself, the iconoclasts were able to oust Irene temporarily. The young Emperor turned out to be decisive only when attacking opponents and committing semi-official adultery, and Irene had little trouble in overthrowing him in 797.

     She now ruled in her own right, and her reign was less than successful. In 797 the Imperium still had some of the old Roman sense of military command, and so a coup d'etat by a general was one thing, but one by a woman not eligible for command was quite another. Her rule was weak, and depended mainly on attempts to buy loyalty and good-will; and nobody, particularly in the West, was very impressed. Added to this was the fact that the Franks rejected both sides in the icon controversy, preferring a middle view - their rejection was based on mistranslation of the conciliar documents, which made it appear that the Greeks worshipped the icons, rather than regarding them as aids to devotion, held in regard because of who they depicted - and the Popes decided that their best bet was to go with the Franks, who were nearby and strong. Leo III, in need of protection from Roman factions, took the view that the Roman imperial throne was vacant, since it was occupied by a non-Imperator, so he decided to surprise Charlemagne by crowning him when he, being in Rome, attended Mass in St. Peter's on Christmas Day.

     Attempts to legitimize this position with Byzantium came to nothing for a few years. Irene was overthrown in the next year by Nicephoros I, who found that the destruction of the Avars left him with a problem, namely the Bulgars, now free to attack Greece. The 'Abbasids invaded as well, on their own behalf, not disagreeably as far as Charlemagne was concerned; he was, after all, their ally against the Byzantines as well as the Spanish Ummayads. Nicephoros was defeated and killed by the Bulgars in 811; his successor Michael I was weak, and easily "persuaded" by Frankish power in Italy to recognize Charles as Emperor in exchange for the return of Venice. The Venetian Republic was of course to prove a "gift", not in the English sense of "present", but rather in the German sense of "poison", but that was in 1204.

     Michael was defeated and then overthrown in 813, but by then the damage was done. Charlemagne was Emperor, Augustus and Basileos. This made it impossible for the Byzantines to ignore Charles, however much of a barbarian they thought him. It also made the Franks, and the Pope as well, completely independent in name as well as fact from Constantinople.

     Charles named his son Louis, who had distinguished himself in Aquitaine, co-Emperor in 813, thus with supreme command over the Frankish empire even though Charles followed the usual custom of dividing the lands between his sons. Louis was competent, and his succession in January 814 was smooth.

     Louis has often been portrayed as in the grain of St. Louis, or, worse still, as a sort of Henry VI, so concerned with the next world that he took little care for this one. That is inaccurate; his problem was due to the collision of two factors: first, the Carolingian habit of subdividing inheritances, and second, the fact that of his heirs all were skilled but none was outstanding. Previously one brother had emerged victorious, since one was outstanding and the rest mediocre; Louis's heirs were another matter.

     Louis's reign was generally uneventful - apart from the usual minor alarms - until 824. Louis's first wife had died in 817, leaving three ambitious sons. Louis remarried, choosing Judith, daughter of a Count Welf from Bavaria. She was as ambitious as the sons, and in 824 produced a son of her own for Louis. Louis attempted to include this child, the future Charles the Bald, in the settlement as Frankish custom required; the three others would have none of that, since they would have to give up something. The eldest, Lothair, in particular objected to all this, and stirred up his brothers to revolt. In 830 they took the field, after preparing the ground with a campaign of propaganda alleging that Judith was guilty of every possible evil. Louis was caught entirely unprepared, as he was planning an expedition against the Bretons; he and his supporters found themselves arrested and stripped of all power.

Louis the Pious. "Temple" denier. Lot 421.

     So far Lothair had won; but he soon proved an incompetent ruler. Discontent reached such proportions that the emperor had little difficulty persuading his younger sons, Pepin of Aquitaine and Louis of Bavaria, to come to his rescue. They summoned an assembly, which pronounced Lothair deposed, and relegated him to imprisonment in a monastery. Louis annulled his earlier partition, and divided the kingdom into three separate kingdoms, with a few trifles left over for Lothair. All seemed well.

     None of this satisfied anybody for long, however. Pepin soon revolted; Louis of Bavaria invaded some of Charles's territory, and Lothair continued to plot. Lothair once again made common cause with his brothers, and once again they forced the surrender of their father at he so-called "Field of Lies" in 833. He was deposed, since it was claimed that Lothair had the duty to depose a tyrant, and Louis "confessed" to whatever was required.

     After the initial euphoria wore off, however, many of those who supported the rebels found themselves uneasy with the disgraceful treatment of Louis by his sons, and the civil wars resumed. Louis, at liberty again in 834, was able despite some minor defeats to impress upon Lothair that ultimate defeat was inevitable, and Lothair had just enough sense to capitulate while he could.

     Louis died in 840, and the resulting partition brought trouble. Lothair received the imperial title and more lands than he deserved; none of it was enough. He attacked Louis of Bavaria, while inciting the sons of the recently deceased Pepin of Aquitaine against Charles. Charles and Louis made common cause, and the result was the battle of Auxerre. In this hard-fought "slugfest" the allies were victorious, but at great cost. The battle did not curb Lothair's ambition, however; it took another two years of warfare to do that. Lothair submitted at last, and remained peaceful until his death in 855.

     The next troublemaker was the weakest, namely Louis of Bavaria. He decided that he was no longer interested in any dealings with his other brothers; the result was that Charles and Lothair allied against him, and he thought better of his mischief.

     Lothair died in 855, and his three sons partitioned their father's lands into three little kingdoms. Charles the Bald was chosen Emperor as the most powerful of the extant rulers. Louis II inherited Italy, and his nearly boundless skill and energy were challenged to the limit by conditions there. Lothair II, another son, inherited "Lotharingia", modern Lorraine. The third son, Charles, inherited Provence. Meanwhile Louis of Bavaria was working to rule Germany, hence his title of "the German" in the records. Charles the Bald ruled well, considering the problems he faced, but it did not help that his reign coincided with the worst of the early Viking period.

Charles the Bald. Denier of Chartres. Lot 422.

     Charles the Bald died in 877, and with him died any hope of Carolingian unity. His successors were incompetent; they ruled until 987, at least in theory, but none were of much importance. They were supplanted in France by the Robertines, whose representative, Robert the Strong, gained such prestige from resistance to Viking raids that two of his sons, Odo and Robert, were chosen as kings of the West Franks, and his great-grandson Hugh Capet, chosen king of France in 987, left descendants who ruled France until 1848.

Odo (Eudes). Denier of Blois. Lot 424.

     Some idea of the degeneracy of the Carolinians can be seen from their epithets: Charles the Fat, Louis the Stammerer, Charles the Simple, Louis the Child, Louis the Foreigner ... none of these inspire much confidence. Charles the Fat raised the Viking siege of Paris by paying "danegeld"; Charles the Simple settled some of them in Normandy. All this did, of course, was to encourage others to arrive in hopes of similar benefits Meanwhile the nobility, emboldened by the weakness of the kings, took the opportunity to become independent. In Germany the situation was similar, with Magyars rather than Vikings; Arnulf of Carinthia, for example, was unable to do much. The Carolingians disappeared from Germany in 918, when Conrad, the last of them, decided that it made sense to leave his kingdom to someone who could manage it, namely Henry of Saxony. In France, Louis IV died without heirs after a hunting accident in 987, and Bishop Adalbero of Rheims took the opportunity to promote the claims of Hugh Capet. His justification was precisely that of Pepin in 751; the arguments were duly accepted, and the rest, as they say, is history. Hugh was crowned at Rheims, establishing the precedent and despite the objections of a pretender the new dynasty's legitimacy was never in doubt.

Hugh Capet. Denier of Beauvais. Lot 427.

     The Coinage Reform of Charlemagne

     Although Charlemagne followed the basic coinage system of his father, midway in his reign he increased the weight basis of the coinage. Various theories have been advanced regarding the reason for the change. Among these Grierson's explanation seems the most plausible. He ties the reform to the break between Charlemagne and Offa in 790 and the cessation of trade between Mercia and Francia which caused a change in weight standard from the Troy to the Paris standard. The units of account were the solidus (of which were there were twenty to the pound) and the denarius (denier, 12 of which equaled a solidus, consequently there were 240 deniers of account in a Carolingian pound reckoned at 408-411 grams by various authors). The coinage however is stuck underweight (the profit going to the moneyers and the state). An interesting document called the edict of Pepin (870 AD) limits the stuck coinage to no more than 22 soldii to the pound (a ten percent seigneurage). The basic broad denier (20mm and 1.7 grams) struck 240 by account to the pound, which was established by Charlemagne, became the standard coinage and monetary system for Northwestern Europe for the next several hundred years.