Text and maps copyright Howard Wiseman 2012.
Last Modified: 4th July 2014
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The fall of the Western Roman Empire is conventionally dated to 476, when the last Western Emperor acclaimed by the Senate in Rome was deposed and replaced by the Germanic King Odoacer. However, a realm ruled by a certain Siagrius, Rex Romanorum (King of the Romans) continued in northern Gaul, even though the Rhine frontier had been lost in the first decade of the 5th century. Siagrius' Kingdom would fall in 486 to the Frankish King Clovis. The accession of Clovis in 481 marks the beginning of the kingdom that would go to become the greatest of the Germanic kingdoms to succeed the Western Roman Empire. But at this time (481) Clovis was merely King of the Salian (sea-side) Franks, a territory indicated by the thick border. And at this time the territory of all the Franks, straddling the lower Rhine, was scarcely larger than that of two other Germanic Kingdoms which bordered Siagrius' realm: the Allemans straddling the upper Rhine, and the Burgundians in south-east Gaul. Moreover, bordering Siagrius' realm to the south was the much larger Kingdom of the Visigoths, encompassing Aquitaine (south-west Gaul), Septimania (southernmost Gaul), Provence (south of the Burgundian Kingdom) and almost all of Spain. It is not coloured because unlike the other polities indicated here, the Visigoths were wiped from the map by the Moslem conquest in the early 8th century, leaving neither political nor linguistic traces. Other polities in Gaul at this time --- also uncoloured because they cannot really be traced to independent nations in the present time --- are the Bretons to the west of Siagrius' kingdom, and the Frisians along the coast of the Netherlands. |
After defeating Siagrius in 486, Clovis
conquered the Allemans in 497, took Aquitaine from the Visigoths in
508, and through murder and intrigue had become sole King of the Franks
by his death in 511. He also campaigned against the Burgundians, but
they were a tougher nut to crack. Burgundy was eventually conquered in
534 by three Frankish Kings --- two of them Clovis' sons and the third
a grandson. For Clovis had partitioned his Kingdom between his sons
upon his death, establishing a pattern that would continue for
centuries. Nevertheless these Kings, and their successors, still
regarded the Frankish realm established by Clovis as a unity, and if
one King died without an adult heir (which was not unusual in those
days of high mortality) his relative(s) would claim back his territory.
This led to continually changing and often disjoint territories which
paid little heed to the regional differences within the Frankish realm.
This, amongst other things, led do a noble's revolt in 613 which made
Clothar II sole King of the Franks. The following year he issued the
Edict of Paris, giving greater
power to the nobles and their regional centres of power, by creating
three sub-Kingdoms, each administered by a Major Domus, a Mayor of the Palace.
Neustria (the "New
Land"), originally referred to the Gallo-Roman territory conquered from
Siagrius, but at this time it also held loose control over Aquitaine.
Burgundia was based on
the original Burgundian kingdom but also included the region around
Orléans, and Provence (ceded by the Goths in 537). Finally Austrasia (the "East Land") also
included the Duchies of Allemania and Bavaria, the latter having
been conquered in the mid 6th century. |
The administrative divisions of the
Frankish realm persisted for 140 years, as real power shifted from the
Kings to the Mayors of the Palace. Aquitaine became an independent
Dukedom in 660, and two years later the rump of Neustria united with
Burgundy. In 687, Pepin, Mayor of Austrasia, defeated the Mayor of
Neustria and became sole governor of the Franks. His grandson, Pepin
"the short", finally ended the royal line of Clovis, and the institution
of Mayor of the Palace, by pronouncing himself King with papal approval
in 752. His son, Charles "the great" (Charlemagne), well earned his
epithet, greatly expanding the Frankish realm in all directions and
being crowned "Emperor governing the Roman Empire" by the Pope in 800.
However, this elevation did not stop Charlemagne from planning to
partition his Empire between his sons as was the Frankish custom. But
all of his sons predeceased him bar Louis "the pious", who inherited
the Empire more-or-less intact on Charlemagne's death in 814. Even
before Louis' death in 840, his three sons were fighting over their
inheritance, and a settlement was not reached until the Treaty of Verdun in 843. The eldest
son, Lothar, received Middle
Francia – most of Italy, most of Burgundy, and
"Lotharingia"(*) in the north including Charlemagne's capital of Aachen
– plus the Imperial title, and a nominal sovereignty over his
brothers: Charles "the bald" of West Francia and Louis "the German" of
East Francia. As well as thus creating France and
Germany, the nations which still dominate Western Europe to the present
day, this agreement (actually the antecedent Oath of Strasbourg of 842) contains
the first recorded example of Old French (as a distinct language from
the Latin preamble) in Charles' address to his troops, and a very early
example of Old High German in Louis' address to his troops. (*) actually named after Lothar's son Lothar II, who inherited it. |
Middle Francia was partitioned into its three parts (Lotharingia, Burgundy, and Italy) on Lothar's death in 855. The first and last of these were annexed by East Francia in 880 and 951 respectively. East Francia had come to be known as Germany since it came under the rule of a Saxon House when Henry "the fowler" was elected King in 919. His son Otto "the great" made the further leap to Emperor in 962, as the last descendant of Charlemagne holding that title had died in 924. It is convenient to call this reborn Empire by its later (1254) title of Holy Roman Empire. Otto was crowned by the Pope, who received land around Rome in return, which however remained part of the Empire. Although the modern remnant, the Vatican, is too small to be seen on these maps, the Papal States played an important role in the politics of western Europe for 900 years. (Another autonomous polity within the the official borders of the Empire was the city of Pisa and its dependencies, the nearby islands of Corsica and Sardinia, which are uncoloured.) Meanwhile, the Burgundian part of Lothar's Kingdom, having long been treated merely as a pawn in the game of claiming the Imperial crown, reemerged as a stable Kingdom of Burgundy in 933. I use a bluish tint for this Kingdom because another polity also survived with he Burgundian name: the Duchy of Burgundy (indicated with a pinkish tint), which had become part of West Francia in 843. By 987, when the dynasty descended from Charlemagne came to an end, West Francia (by then known simply as Francia, or France) had become a kingdom in name only. The new House of Capet properly ruled only the region around Paris, the Isle de France, as Bretons, Norman settlers, and over-powerful nobles took control of the rest of the kingdom. The French king Robert II claimed the Duchy of Burgundy in 1004, but passed it to his son Henry in 1016. In 1031, when Henry I became King of France, he brought the Duchy into the royal domain once more (hence the blue dots). Another notable polity within the official borders of France was the group of Catalan Counties dominated by Barcelona. These counties had refused to recognize the Capetian dynasty, and so must be counted as effectively independent since 987. |
The Duchy of Burgundy remained a
possession of the French king for only a year: Henry I granted it to
his brother Robert in 1032, and he and his descendants were to rule as
Dukes for more than three centuries. In that same year, the Kingdom of Burgundy also
changed its status, but in the opposite direction: when Rudolph III,
King of Burgundy, died childless, he left the kingdom to the Holy Roman
Emperor, Conrad II. Burgundy, or Arelate as it became known after its
capital of Arles, remained a kingdom in name, becoming one of the three
constituents of the Empire. But the
Emperors were always more interested in the other two kingdoms, Germany
and (northern) Italy. In 1127, Emperor Lothar III handed the regal
powers in Burgundy to a German Duke, Conrad. Conrad styled himself
''Duke and Rector of Burgundy", but later Emperors tried to limit the
power of his dynasty. When Conrad's grandson died without issue in
1218, the title of Rector was
conferred upon the seven-year-old Henry, eldest son of the (as
yet uncrowned) Emperor Frederick II (hence the red dots in the Kingdom
of Burgundy). Meanwhile, a fourth Kingdom had been created within borders of the Empire: the Kingdom of Bohemia. This had
become autonomous under King Ottokar in 1198, and the future Emperor
Frederick II confirmed its status as an hereditary monarchy on his
accession in 1212 as King of the Romans (a title actually meaning King
of Germany) and King of Italy. Frederick II was to be the first Holy
Roman Emperor to nominally rule all of Italy --- he had inherited the
Kingdom of Sicily (which included southern Italy) in 1198 --- and he
modelled himself on the ancient Roman Emperors. But he would spend much
of his long reign (until 1250) trying to enforce his rule there. He was
opposed both by the Popes, who were extending the Papal States and feared
nothing more than being surrounded by Imperial arms, and by the
increasingly affluent mercantile cities of northern Italy. While the
power of the Emperor was waning, that of the King of France,
Phillip Augustus, was waxing. While the Royal Domain was still only a
fraction of the area within the official borders of France, at least now it
was larger than that of any of the King's rivals. Moreover, those
official borders were expanding at the expense of the Kingdom of
Burgundy. However across the Pyrenees, Catalonia had definitively
separated from France. Count Ramon IV of Cataloniabecame the Prince Regent of Aragon (to the west) through marriage in
1137. His son Alfonso II, who succeeded in 1164, chose the title King of
Aragon as ruler of the united realm. |
When Emperor Frederick II was crowned by
the Pope in 1220, his son Henry was elected King of the Romans (i.e.
King of Germany and heir to the Empire), and dropped the title of
Rector of Burgundy. Thereafter there was no attempt to govern Arelate as
a single unit. As Imperial power weakened from the later 13th century
onwards, the increasingly powerful Kings of France further extended the borders of France eastward into
Arelate, and brought Provence under their influence. The remainder of
the ex-Kingdom of Burgundy was dominated by the County of Savoy. Count
Amadeus VI was named Imperial Vicar for the Kingdom of Arelate in 1365,
and in 1416 the County became the Duchy of Savoy.
Imperial weakness also led to full independence for the (still growing)
Papal States in 1282,
and to the gradual development of autonomy for, amongst others, the
Swiss Confederation
(founded in 1291), the Electorate
of Brandenburg (a status granted in 1356 meaning that the
Margrave of Brandenburg would be one of those who elected the Emperor),
and the Arch-Duchy of
Austria (self-proclaimed in 1358, after
the Duke of Austria was not
raised to the status of an Elector) and its dependencies under the
Hapsburgs. By the time of this map, the Hapsburg Frederick III had been
Emperor since 1440, and the title would be held by his descendants
until 1806 (apart from 1742-5). As Colin McEvedy [4] wrote, the Electors were prepared to allow
this monopoly on the Imperial throne "because its possession was a
source of weakness rather than strength." This weakness was most
evident on the western borders of the
Empire, where, starting in 1384, the Valois Dukes of Burgundy (in France) acquired
an extensive array of territories by marriage alliance and purchase.
This included the Free County (Franche Comté) of Burgundy (that part of
the ex-Kingdom of Burgundy immediately to the east of the Duchy), much
of what had once been Lotharingia (see 843), as well
as Flanders and Picardy in France. Collectively, all of these
territories were known as Burgundy, and made the Dukes one of the
wealthiest monarchs in Europe. The last of them, Charles "the bold"
(1467-77) aimed at nothing less than the revival of Lothar's Middle
Kingdom. He effectively controlled numerous neighbouring Bishoprics and
Principalities (these are shown in Burgundian colour in the map, which
also somewhat simplifies the convoluted borders). He had subjugated and
planned to annex Savoy (effectively under the rule of the Valois
Duchess Yolande) [9], and Nevers to the west
(under the Valois Count John) was nominally his vassal. In 1473 Charles
nearly managed to force the Emperor Frederick III to grant him the
title King of Burgundy. Burgundian territory reached its peak in 1475, with Charles'
conquest of Lorraine (the southernmost part of Lotharingia,
which still retained the ancient name). For the first time since 855,
there was a realm between France and Germany whose power extended from
the North Sea to the Mediterranean. |
The ambitions of Charles the Bold
alarmed Louis XI of France, who financed the Swiss and the ousted Duke
of Lorraine to make war upon him and Savoy. In 1477, Charles, living up
to his epithet, was killed in a reckless attempt to retake Nancy in
Lorraine. He had no sons, and his only daughter Marie was unmarried, so
his Middle Kingdom died with him. The Duke of Lorraine regained his
Duchy, and Louis XI invaded the other Burgundian territories. But Marie
agreed to marry Maximilian, heir of the Hapsburg Emperor Frederick III,
to try to preserve her inheritance. In this way, Emperor Maximilian of
Austria ended up ruling most of the Burgundian territories within the
Empire, as well as extending the
Empire's border to encompass Flanders and Picardy. These former
Burgundian territories now under Hapsburg rule were known as the Burgundian Circle, one of ten Imperial
Circles (regions) set up for taxation and governance in 1512. Marie and
Maximilian's son Phillip meanwhile had married Joanna the Mad,
daughter of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castilla. Phillip and
Joanna's eldest son Charles had inherited all of his grandparent's
territories by 1519 --- Spain and its growing Empire in
Italy and the New World, the Burgundian Circle, and Austria --- as well as the
Imperial title. But he faced stiff opposition from an alliance between
the Ottoman Empire and France. The latter had finally
become a unified Kingdom (apart from a few tiny territories) when
Francis, recently married to Claude, heiress of Brittany, ascended to
the French throne in 1514 (*). To deal with this threat on all sides of
his Empire, Charles made his brother Ferdinand Archduke of Austria in
1521. By 1556, when Charles abdicated, Ferdinand had brought Bohemia
and western Hungary into the Austrian fold. Ferdinand kept these and
gained the Imperial title, while Charles' son Phillip II got the rest,
including the Burgundian Circle. This Circle had been extended in the
north in 1548 but in 1566 these northernmost subjects of Spain, and
their fellow Protestants around the Zuiderzee, rebelled. Their
struggle for independence from Spain lasted 82 years, the last 30 of
which were part of the terrible 30-years war which laid waste much of
the Empire. It ended with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which saw a
major contraction in the Empire. It had been known as the Holy Roman Empire of the
German Nation since 1512, and the new
boundaries of the Empire reflected this, ending the fiction of
Imperial power in northern Italy, Savoy, Switzerland, and the United Provinces of the
Netherlands. But the greater part of the Burgundian Circle remained within the Empire,
under Spanish rule (hence the
green Spanish dots on the original Burgundian colour). Spain also kept the
Kingdom of Naples (held by Aragon since 1504) and the Duchy of Milan
(held since 1535). (*) As a consequence the official borders of France are no longer shown on the map. |
The Franche Comté of Burgundy, the southernmost part of the Burgundian Circle, was annexed by France in 1678, and around the same time the French pushed their border west to the Rhine and regained Picardy in the north. Following the war of the Spanish succession (which put a Bourbon King on the throne of Spain) the remaining part of the Burgundian Circle was transferred to the Austrian Hapsburgs in 1713. But for some, the dream of the Middle Kingdom would not die: Charles Thomas, Elector of Bavaria, tried to trade Bavaria for these Austrian Netherlands and the title "King of Burgundy" in 1778 and again in 1784. The French revolution and Napoleon's victories swept aside the relics of medieval polities and institutions across Europe. These including the Holy Roman Empire, which in its act of auto-dissolution in 1806 referred to itself merely as the German Confederation. Following Napoleon's defeat, the map of Europe was once again redrawn by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The German Confederation was reformed but it was completely dominated by the two great powers which had grown in the lebensraum on its eastern frontier: Austria (an Empire since 1806) and Prussia (formerly Brandenburg, and a Kingdom since 1701). The German Confederation also excluded, mostly, the former Austrian Netherlands which were added to the United Provinces to create (it was hoped) a strong buffer against France. The exception was the south-western corner (Luxembourg) which was part of both the German Confederation and the new Kingdom of the Netherlands. But the former Hapsburg subjects, both French and Flemish speaking, objected to rule by the northerners, and revolted in 1831. The final settlement in 1839 saw international recognition for the Kingdom of Belgium (named after the Gallic tribe Julius Caesar had said was a mixture of Celts and Germans), with the Kingdom of the Netherlands keeping only two small provinces beyond its pre-Napoleonic borders: Maastricht and the western part of Luxembourg. The border of the German Confederation was adjusted to exclude the eastern part of Luxembourg which had gone to Belgium, but to include Maastricht. To the south, meanwhile, the Congress also strengthened the Kingdom of Sardinia (as Savoy had been known since it annexed Sardinia in 1720) as another buffer state against France, by granting it Genoa. The original County of Savoy had been French (or, more accurately, Franco-Provençal) speaking, but over the centuries its eastward drift had made the Kingdom of Sardinia predominantly Italian. And with the growth in nationalism fostered by Napoleon, Italians were no longer content to live in half a dozen major states (plus some tiny ones), nor to have Lombardy and Venetia in the north ruled by Austria (which had been the case since 1815). In 1859, Emperor Napoleon III of France and King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia drove the Austrians out of Lombardy, which Austria ceded (to France, which immediately transferred it to Sardinia) in the Treaty of Zürich. Meanwhile, the people of Tuscany, Parma, and Modena had expelled their Princely rulers and organised themselves into the United Provinces of Central Italy. They occupied the northern parts of the Papal States, and accepted a Governer General from Sardinia. |
The unification of northern and central
Italy under Sardinia was not what Napoleon III had wanted, and he was
persuaded to allow a plebiscite in the United Provinces of Central
Italy in 1860 only when Victor Emmanuel ceded to France the regions of
Savoy and Nice --- the last remnants of the once Kingdom of Burgundy
ruled by the House of Savoy. The Central Italians voted overwhelmingly
for union with Sardinia and by 1870 all Italian-speaking lands (except
Corsica) had been united under Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy. In that same year
Prussia trounced France,
having already trounced Austria in 1866 and abolished the German
Confederation. With one exception, all of the German-speaking states
bar Austria were persuaded to unify with Prussia to form the German
Empire in 1871, and this artificial division between Germany and
Austria
persists to the present. The one exception was the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, in the heart of
the original Frankish territories and coloured to suit, which became
independent (Dutch-speaking Maastricht stayed with the Netherlands). In 1919,
following the First World War, the Austrian Empire was dismembered, but
the process of disintegration did not finish until 1993, when the Czech republic was born, almost
identical in its extent to the Kingdom of Bohemia of 1198. Meanwhile in
1945, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the frontiers of Poland
had also been restored to those of eight centuries earlier, with eight
million Germans repatriated from east of the Oder-Neisse line. To
prevent a repeat of the terrible carnage of the two World Wars, the
governments of western Europe dedicated themselves to forming an ever
closer economic, cultural, and political union. The European Union (EU)
has spread to encompass the overwhelming majority of European countries
west of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. But within the EU there is the
smaller common-currency Eurozone. When the physical currency, the Euro,
was launched in 2002, the Eurozone comprised the coloured countries
surrounded by the black border
in the map, plus the four corners of the EU (off the map): Greece,
Portugal, Ireland, and Finland. Not counting those four countries, and
ignoring the aloofness of Switzerland, the original core
of the Eurozone corresponds well to Charlemagne's Empire of twelve
centuries earlier. This is hardly a coincidence. Moreover, the de facto capital of the EU is
Brussels, capital of Belgium, still the Middle
Kingdom between France and Germany. |
This map summarizes the areas ruled by
Europe's Middle Kingdom(s) --- i.e. those coloured like Italy, Belgium, or the Netherlands above
--- over the last 16 centuries. The depth of the colour indicates how
many times that region appears within a Middle Kingdom in the nine maps
above. No region appears in all nine maps. The darkest shade corresponds to areas that appear in seven of the above maps. There are three such regions, from north to south: Franche Comté, Savoy (which appears in eight), and Nice. Savoy was at the heart of the original Burgundian settlement in Gaul in 443, so it is fitting to find it the most persistent part of the Middle Kingdoms. The dark shade shows areas that appear in five of the above. There are two such regions. The odd-shaped region in the north encompasses much of Belgium and the Netherlands. The larger region in the south is the core of the Burgundian Kingdom, with an extension over the Alps reflecting the expansion of the Duchy of Savoy into Italy. The light shade is for areas that appear in at least two maps. It is necessary to go this far to unify the northern and southern regions into a single region. It encompasses (i) the whole of Italy north of Rome, (ii) a large Burgundian region west of the Alps, (iii) the whole of Belgium, and the Netherlands, and (iv) a narrow strip of connecting territory including Luxembourg between (ii) and (iii). The lightest shade is what appears in any of the maps. This extends the preceding region to include the whole of Italy, the area around Orléans, a much wider connecting strip stretching as far east as the Rhine for most of its length, plus Picardy and the north-west coast of Germany. Given that I have characterized the Middle Kingdoms as lying between France and Germany, the most remarkable feature of this map is how much of their territory has been absorbed by France, and how little by Germany. Indeed, if one considers areas appearing in six or more of the above nine maps, one finds that all such areas are contained within the present borders France. This is no longer true if one considers those appearing in five or more (the dark shade), but not because some of these areas are within Germany, but rather because some are within the successor states of Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands. |