Longobard campaign
The Longobard campaign of Charlemagne lasted almost a year, from the late summer of 773 to the summer of 774 , and ended with the victory of the Franks over the Longobard Empire of King Desiderius .
Reasons for war
After King Pippin's death in 768 , the Franconian Empire was divided between his sons Karl and Karlmann . But very soon the rivalry between the brothers for power and territory began. While looking for an ally against his brother, Karl found Desiderius, King of the Lombards, Karlmann's father-in-law and the Bavarian Duke Tassilo III. The alliance was brokered by Karl's mother to secure the Franconian Empire to the south. To strengthen the alliance, Karl married Desiderius' daughter. Her name is not known with certainty, but it is sometimes given as Gerperga . To distinguish it from Karlmann's wife, who was also called Gerperga or Gerberga, she is also called Desiderata, based on a play on words by Adalhard von Corbie .
Karlmann died unexpectedly on December 4th, 771 at the age of only 20 years. His two sons were too young to take over his inheritance, and so Karl took the opportunity to reunite the Franconian Empire. Meanwhile, Karlmann's widow Gerberga fled with her sons to Karl's father-in-law Desiderius in Pavia . The Lombard king was still allied with Charles, but could not be interested in a unification of the Frankish Empire; too great a power would have been in the hands of a ruler.
Karl found the asylum for Gerberga and her sons at the Lombard court as a provocation. The alliance with Desiderius was no longer of any use to him after Karlmann's death, so he abandoned Desiderius' daughter after only one year of marriage. Although this amounted to a declaration of war, there were no military clashes in 772. Meanwhile, Desiderius tried to persuade the newly elected Pope Hadrian I , who was elected in February 772, to a pro-Longobard policy. The Pope should consecrate the two sons of Karlmann to Frankish kings, with which Desiderius would officially have to enforce their legitimate right as heir to the throne in the upcoming conflict.
But Pope Hadrian, whose predecessors had been in conflict with the Lombards over areas in northern and central Italy for decades, refused. Desiderius did not want to accept this and turned to military threatening gestures; He temporarily occupied Roman territory and could allegedly only be prevented from attacking Rome under threat of excommunication . Hadrian's request for help reached Karl, who then made Desiderius several offers to negotiate. The Lombard king refused, so a military conflict was inevitable, since the Franks, as the protective power of the Papal States, had to cross the Alps when they asked for help.
The campaign
The crossing of the Alps
For the summer of 773, Charles had his army assembled near Geneva . Here he divided his army into two corps. One he personally took on the Chambéry - Modane - Mont Cenis route , the other his uncle Bernhard on the Martigny - Great St. Bernhard - Aosta - Ivrea route to Italy.
According to a traditional description of the further course of events, the two armies reunited near Susa , on the Italian side of the Alps. To the east of them in the Susa valley was a natural bottleneck, the so-called Klausen von Sankt Michael . There Desiderius and his son Adelchis , who were clearly inferior to the Franks in an open field battle, tried to stop the invaders. Karl could not dare to attack, so he again sent an offer to negotiate with the Lombards; without success. Charles's advance came to a halt.
The legend now reports that a Longobard minstrel came to the Franconian camp at night and offered Karl to lead his men on an unknown mountain path into the back of the Longobards. He demanded that all land should belong to him, as far as you can hear his horn . Karl agreed, and after the successful action the minstrel stood on a mountain, blew his horn, and then went through all the surrounding valleys. Whom he met he asked if he had heard bubbles. If he said yes, he slapped him and considered him his property. This story found its way into Jacob Grimm's collection of German sagas ; it originally comes from the chronicle of the nearby Novalesa monastery . However, since this was only created over two centuries later, its historicity can be questioned.
However, the process described is not very credible - geographically it is not possible that Charles and Bernhard's army units united on the west side of the Klausen. On his route from Ivrea, Bernhard would have had to pass the army of the Lombards, since the Susa valley only has an eastern entrance to the one that Desiderius blocked. Both armies of the Franks could only have united in the Gavensian plain .
It is therefore more likely that Karl expected Desiderius to meet him at the Klausen in Geneva. King Aisthulf had also done this in 756 when Charles' father Pippin marched against the Lombards. For this very reason, Karl could have divided his army, with the Franks always moving in several departments to a predetermined location. The second division, which Desiderius had obviously not expected, would have come to the Klausen from the east, while Karl was in the west. The last attempt at negotiation should therefore probably only gain time until Bernhard's troops were in position.
Whether through prior planning or the help of the minstrel - Karl managed to stab Desiderius in the back. When the latter recognized his hopeless situation, he ordered a retreat, which was largely disorderly. While the Longobards fled towards the Po Valley, the Franks followed suit. Desiderius tried to get to safety behind the walls of his capital, Pavia . His son Adelchis fled to Karlmann's widow Gerberga in Verona, which was also heavily fortified .
Siege of Pavia and Verona
In the autumn of 773, Charles began the siege of Pavia . Since he hadn't been able to take any of the siege engines with him - which had been tried and tested in Pippin's Aquitaine campaign - when crossing the Alps, he wanted to starve the city. No decision had been made by the end of 773.
Part of the army besieged Verona at the same time. Although the city was one of the most strongly fortified in the Lombard Empire, Gerberga surrendered. Adelchis was able to flee and reached Constantinople via detours . Since there was apparently no fighting in front of the city, Gerberga was extradited to Karl. What happened to her and her or Karlmann's sons afterwards is not known.
At Easter 774, when the grueling siege of Pavia had been going on for six months, Charles moved to Rome with part of the army. Received by Pope Hadrian, he renewed the alliance of the Franks with the papacy, the so-called " Pippin donation ", which guaranteed the church possessions in central Italy. In April Karl returned to the trapped Pavia, whose defenders had been decimated by a lack of food and outbreaks of disease. On June 4th, 774, after nine months of siege, the city surrendered, and with it the Lombard king Desiderius.
result
One day after Pavias was taken, Charles assumed the title of "King of the Lombards". His predecessor in office, Desiderius, was banished to a Frankish monastery. His son Adelchis was able to move to Byzantium , but played no more important role in the following years, even if he was supposed to have been involved in a later uprising in northern Italy, which forced Karl to cross the Alps again. Karl ordered Frankish, Burgundian and Alemannic nobles to manage the new territories. As rex Francorum et Langobardorum (German: King of the Franks and Longobards), he now controlled all of western Europe (with the exception of the Iberian peninsula, which was ruled by the Moors ). The military superiority of the Franks had been impressively demonstrated. At the same time, the close network of Franconian kingship (later empire) and the Pope was consolidated. Pope Zacharias had already legitimized Karl's father Pippin to take over the Franconian title of king from the Merovingian family .
literature
- Bernard S. Bachrach : Charlemagne's Early Campaigns (768-777). A Diplomatic and Military Analysis (= History of Warfare, Vol. 82). Brill, Leiden and Boston 2013, ISBN 978-90-04-22410-0 .
- Ross Balzaretti: Charlemagne in Italy . In: History Today 46/2 (1996), pp. 28-34.
- Karlheinz Deschner: criminal history of Christianity. Volume 4, Early Middle Ages, Chapter 15. (rororo non-fiction book 60344 - Reinbek near Hamburg 1994)
- Georgine Tangl: Charlemagne's way across the Alps . In: QFIAB 37 (1957), pp. 1-15.
