Content deleted Content added
Aldebaran69 (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Aldebaran69 (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
Line 96:
For his part, Hugh the Great continues to claim to be the Duke of the Franks. The royal acts show that Hugh that further strengthens its legitimacy. In a letter from 938, the Pope called him Duke of the Franks, three years later (941) he presided a meeting in Paris during which he raised personally, in the manner of a King, his viscounts to the rank of counts. Finally, Hugh the Great had the decisive respect of the entire episcopate of France.
===Difficulties during the early years of rule (938–945)===
====Louis IV and his supporters (938–939)====
The rivalries between the nobility appears as the only hope for the King to emancipate himself from the tutelage of Hugh the Great. In 937, Louis IV began to relies more on his Chancellor Artaud, Archbishop of Reims, Hugh the Black and William I Longsword, all enemies of Hugh the Great. He also receives the homage of other important nobles like [[Alan II, Duke of Brittany]] (who also spent part of his life in England) and [[Sunyer, Count of Barcelona]]. Nevertheless, the support for the King was still limited, until the Pope clearly favored him after he forced the French nobles to renewed their homage to the King in 942.
However the King's power in the south was symbolic since the death of the last Count of the [[Marca Hispanica|Spanish March]] (878). Hugh the Great response to the King's alliances approximating Herbert II of Vermandois, a very present ruler in minor France: it possessed a tower, called château Gaillot in the city of Laon. The following year, the King seized the tower but Herbert II conquered the fortresses of Reims. The King then looks to the [[Lotharingia]], the land of his ancestors and began his attempts to recovered it. In 939, Duke Gislebert (then rebelled against King Otto I of Germany) offer him the crown; Louis IV receives the homage of the Lotharingian aristocracy in [[Verdun]] on his way to Aachen.
Shortly after (2 October 939) drowned at the [[Rhine]] while escaping from the forces of Otto I after his defeat at the [[Battle of Andernach]]. Louis IV took this opportunity to strengthen his domain over Lotharingia by marrying Giselbert's widow, Gerberga of Saxony (end 939), without the consent of her brother King Otto I. The wedding, however, didn't stopped the plans of the German King, who, after being allied with Hugh the Great, Herbert II of Vermandois and William I Longsword, reasumed his invasion to Lotharingia and advanced towards Reims. Flodoard related the events as follows:
::But Louis, called by the archbishop Artaud returned and besieged Laon where a new citadel was built by Herbert. He undermine and overthrow many machines walls and finally took it with great difficulty.
====Crisis of the Royal identity (940–941)====
In 940, the invaders finally conquered the city of Reims, where archbishop Artald was expelled and replaced by [[Hugh of Vermandois (bishop)|Hugh of Vermandois]], a younger son of Herbert II, who also seized the precious patrimony of Saint-Remi. About this, Flodoard wrote:
::These are the same Franks who want this King, who crossed the sea at their request, the same ones who sworn loyalty to him and lied to God and that King?.
Flodoard also publishes at the end of his ''Annals'' the testimony of a girl from Reims (the ''Visions of Flothilde'') who predicted the expulsion of Artald from Reims. Flothilde mentioned that the saints are alarmed about the disloyalty of the nobles against the King. This testimony was widespreaded believed, especially among the population of Reims, who believed that the internal order and peace come from the oaths of loyalty to the King, while Artald was blamed of having forsaken divine service. Contemporary christian tradition affirmed that Saint Martin attended the coronation of 936. Now the two royal patrons saints, Saint Remi and Saint Denis, seems to have turned back to the King's rule. To soften the anger of the saints, in the middle of the siege of Reims by Hugh the Great and William I Longsword, Louis IV goes to Saint Remi Basilica and promised to the saint to pay him a pound of silver every year.
In the meanwhile, Hugh the Great and his vassals have sworn allegiance to Otto I, who moved to the Carolingian Palace of [[Attigny, Ardennes|Attigny]] before his unsuccessfully siege of Laon. In 941 the royal army, which tried to oppose the German invasion, was defeated and Artald was forced to submitted to the rebels. Now Louis IV was enclosed in the only property that remains in his hands: the city of Laon. The king of Germany believes that the power King of France is sufficiently diminished and propose a reconciliation with the Duke of the Franks and the Count of Vermandois: from now Otto I was the new arbitrator in the West.
Louis IV [[List of horse accidents|fell from his horse]] and died on 30 September 954 at [[Rheims]], in the [[Marne (departement)|Marne]], where he is interred at [[Saint Rémi Basilica]].<ref name="Bradbury41">Jim Bradbury, ''The Capetians: Kings of France 987-1328'', (Hambledon Continuum, 2007), 41.</ref>
| |||