Charles the Bald

King of France (r. 840-877) and Holy Roman Emperor (r. 875-877)

• Born: June 13, 0823
• Birthplace: Frankfurt am Main (now in Germany)
• Died: October 6, 0877
• Place of death: Avrieux or Brides-les-Bain, France

Reigning during one of the most turbulent periods in European history, Charles managed to survive and pass the crown of the West Frankish kingdom to his posterity.

Early Life

Charles the Bald was the grandson of Charlemagne and the son of the Frankish emperor Louis the Pious and his second wife, Judith. At the time of Charles's birth, the emperor already had three sons: Lothair, the eldest; Louis the German; and Pépin. Indeed, in 817 Louis had published a decree establishing the method by which the empire would be divided among the three at his death. Lothair was to succeed as emperor and Louis the German and Pépin were to hold kingdoms under his rule. Louis the German and Pépin had already been invested with the kingdoms they were to hold.

This situation was further complicated by the fact that the new empress, Judith, was of the Welf family, a noble family prominent in that section of the empire known as Alamannia (modern Alsace). This portion of the realm had been very difficult for the Carolingian Frankish rulers to control, and Louis the Pious, in marrying a daughter of this aristocratic family, believed that he could establish closer and friendlier ties. When Judith and Louis had a son, the future of Alamannia seemed secure. The elder brothers of the new prince, however, had no intention of allowing their portions of the territory to diminish. Because Judith did not want the young heir's interests to be ignored, the situation intensified. The result was civil war when, in 829, Charles was given a portion of land taken from the portions already allotted his brothers. The warring continued intermittently until Louis the Pious died in 840.

Life's Work

Charles's half brother Pépin was already dead when their father, Louis the Pious, died. Although Pépin had a son of his own, Pépin II, Charles received title to the land previously allotted to Pépin I, reserving the rights of Pépin II in Aquitaine, which Pépin II was to hold as a subkingdom under Charles's suzerainty.

In the division of the empire among the brothers, Charles received the western portions of the empire, which conformed, loosely, to what is now the nation of France, while Louis the German received the eastern portion of the empire, conforming loosely to what is now Germany. Lothair, the eldest brother and the new emperor, obtained a long, narrow strip of territory situated between what are modern France and Germany and including the modern territories of the Low Countries, Luxembourg, Alsace, Switzerland, and Italy.

Louis the German and Charles the Bald almost immediately attacked Lothair with the intention of adding to their portions bits of land detached from his. When Lothair died in 855, he was succeeded by his sons Lothair II in Lorraine, Charles in Provence, and Louis in Italy. Lothair II died in 869, after which Charles the Bald and Louis the German partitioned his realm.

Within his own kingdom, Charles the Bald had considerable difficulties. During the whole of his reign, the kingdom of France was subjected to repeated attacks by the Vikings. The Meuse, Seine, and Loire Rivers were navigable by the Viking longboats for considerable distances upstream, which meant that no region, even in the interior, was safe from their raids. The speed of the Viking attacks was such that it was not possible for Charles to organize an efficient defense; as a result, he usually had to bribe the Vikings to go away.

In addition, Charles had continuing difficulties with the subkingdom of Aquitaine, ruled by his nephew Pépin II; Pépin tended to ignore his overlord and uncle, and Charles wished to dispossess Pépin. The Aquitanian nobles generally supported Pépin but kept the controversy alive as a means to prevent any stable central government from limiting their influence. Charles tried to imprison Pépin II in 855 but had to release him when Louis the German sent his sons Louis the Younger and Charles the Fat to take advantage of the situation and seize Aquitaine for themselves. Charles the Bald did not take control of Aquitaine until 864, when he imprisoned Pépin a second time, after which Pépin disappeared. In the end, Charles was never able to rule Aquitaine.

As if these problems were not enough, Charles had great difficulty keeping his nobles loyal. The partitioning of the realm had taken place amid constant conflicts among members of the imperial family. This climate of general disorder was exacerbated by the inability of the Crown to deal adequately with the Vikings.

Despite all these problems, Charles the Bald managed to create at his court an atmosphere of cultivation and scholarship. Several of the most distinguished scholars of the Western world including John Scotus Erigena, Lupus of Ferrières, Walafrid Strabo, and Hincmar of Reims were active in the affairs of Charles's realm.

At the end of his life, Charles became emperor. His nephew Louis of Italy had succeeded to the imperial title in 869 when Lothair had died. Conditions in Italy were disturbed as a result of the invasion of the peninsula by Muslim armies from North Africa. When Louis died in 875, Pope John VIII called on Charles for assistance. Charles made an expedition to Italy in 875 and was crowned emperor on December 25 of that year, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the imperial coronation of his grandfather, Charlemagne. Yet Charles was unable to stem the Muslim threat to Rome and the Papacy and, discouraged, retired from Italy in 877. It was while he was on the way home from Italy, with his own kingdom under attack by the Germans, that Charles died on October 6. He was succeeded by his son Louis the Stammerer.

Significance

During his fifty-four years, Charles the Bald witnessed the destruction of the great European empire created by his grandfather and the Frankish armies. Ultimately, the empire disintegrated, because it was too unwieldy and too ethnically diverse to be integrated into a cohesive whole. The chronic wars among the descendants of Charlemagne, to which Charles the Bald was a party, were merely symptomatic of larger problems that the political and social structures of the period simply could not solve.

Nevertheless, Charles the Bald was, in certain ways, a successful ruler. He managed to preserve and support the cultural activities of the Carolingian renaissance. He was also a dutiful son of the Church, cooperating fully with his bishops and promoting the continuing Christianization of the western Frankish lands. Moreover, the seeming chaos of his reign should not obscure the fact that in surviving and keeping the Crown amid myriad difficulties he achieved as much as was humanly possible.

Bibliography

Barraclough, Geoffrey. The Crucible of Europe: The Ninth and Tenth Centuries in European History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. A useful guide to the general context of late Carolingian affairs.

Duckett, Eleanor Shipley. Carolingian Portraits: A Study of the Ninth Century. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962. Contains studies of Lupus of Ferrières, Hincmar of Reims, and Walafrid Strabo influential scholars of the time of Charles the Bald.

Dunbabin, Jean. France in the Making, 843-1180. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1985. Chapter 1 deals with Charles the Bald.

Engreen, F. E. “Pope John VIII and the Arabs.” Speculum 20 (1945): 318-330. One of the very few studies addressing the Arab problem in Italy during the time of Charles the Bald.

Halphen, Louis. Charlemagne and the Carolingian Empire. Translated by G. de Nie. Amsterdam: North Holland, 1977. Part 3 of this volume discusses the affairs of Charles the Bald and his brothers.

Hen, Yitzhak. The Royal Patronage of Liturgy in Frankish Gaul to the Death of Charles the Bald. Woodbridge: Boydell Press for the Henry Bradshaw Society, 2001. Hen, a lecturer in history at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, shows that royal patronage of liturgy characterized early medieval Francia and became an important means of political power. Bibliography, indexes.

Jeep, John M., et al., eds. Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 2001. An A-Z encyclopedia that addresses all aspects of the German- and Dutch-speaking medieval world from 500 to 1500. Entries include individuals, events, and broad topics such as feudalism and pregnancy. Bibliographical references, index.

McKitterick, Rosamond. The Frankish Kingdoms Under the Carolingians. New York: Longmans, Green, 1983. A useful synthesis, although it does not supersede Halphen’s study. The latter portion discusses the period of Charles the Bald’s life.

Moore, Robert Ian. The First European Revolution, c. 970-1215. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000. According to the publisher, “a radical reassessment of Europe from the late tenth to the early thirteenth centuries [arguing that] the period witnessed the first true ’revolution’ in European society,” supported by transformation of the economy, family life, political power structures, and the rise of the non-Mediterranean cities. Bibliography, index.

Nelson, Janet L. Charles the Bald. New York: Longman, 1992. A biography that discusses political and historical features of Charles’s reign. Bibliography, index.

Poupardin, René. “The Carolingian Kingdoms, 840-877.” In Germany and the Western Empire. Vol. 3 in Cambridge Medieval History/Middle Ages. New York: Macmillan, 1922. A detailed and invaluable account of the period of Charles the Bald’s life and the complicated affairs of the divided empire.

Wallace-Hadrill, John Michael. A Carolingian Renaissance Prince: The Emperor Charles the Bald. London: British Academy, 1980. An analysis of Charles from the proceedings of the British Academy. Bibliography.