22.3 Europe: a.d. 701 to 800  (Page 2/6)

NOTE: Map 34: Lombard Kingdom Before Its Conquest by Charlemagne in 774 and

Map 35: Expansion of the Papal States 756-817

Maps taken from Reference 97

Naples, Amalfi and Venice continued as independent states with Venice actually helping the Moors enslave some Europeans. (Ref. 222 ) The first European medical school was founded in this century at Salerno, in southern Italy. Sardinia was invaded by Moslem forces in 720 and in this and the next century Sicily was exposed to sudden, devastating raids by Moslem free-booters. (Ref. 137 , 83 )

Central europe

The use of the heavy plow (see pages 439 and 443) in northern Europe accounted for an increase of food and a consequent increase in population. Although there continued to be Merovingian kings in the Frankish kingdoms of Austrasia and Neustria up until 7529 throughout this century the real administration of western Germany, as well as of France, was under control of the House of Pepin, later called the Carolingian Dynasty, all descended from Pepin of Landen and Arnulf, the Bishop of Metz. Among these descendants was Charles Martel, Mayor of Austrasia and Neustria from 714 to 741 (See FRANCE, below), and Pepin III, the Short, Mayor of Neustria and king of the Franks from 747 to 768. It was this Pepin who first responded to the pope's pleas for help against the Lombards and did manage to force them out of Pentapolis and Ravenna. Thereafter the Carolingians maintained a protectorate over the papacy in Italy. (Ref. 180 , 119 )

In 768 Pepin III's son, Charles the Great (In France - "Charlemagne" and in Germany more correctly "Karl the Great"), became king of Austrasia, Neustria and northern Aquitaine, while his brother, Carloman, ruled over southern Aquitaine, Burgundy and Septimania. Charles (or Karl) was a typical German, six feet in height, a superb swimmer and athlete. He married a Lombardi princess but soon repudiated her and conquered all of Lombard Italy as well as Venetia, Istria, Dalmatia and Corsica. The Bavarian duchy had begun an eastward expansion that drove a wedge between the southern Slavs and the main mass of Slavic people to the north by 758, thus isolating the Balkan groups. Karl incorporated Bavaria into his kingdom in 778 and in the next year took Carinthia (southern Austria) and Vienna became a Carolingian-Frankish border fortress. Saxony fell to Karl in 785 and so all Germany, Austria, Bohemia and even a portion of Hungary came to be a part of his domain. As a result the more northern Slavs were pushed back east of the Elbe River, creating "New Germany", a distinction that has persisted in some degree to this day. The Elbe now roughly corresponds to the border between present East and West Germany. The history of the region of Brandenburg (later Prussia) begins when Karl the Great established forts along the Elbe to keep out the Slavs. (Ref. 180 , 137 )

In Hungary Karl's troops reduced the Avars to a mere remnant, as they were crushed between this Frankish army and a Bulgar attack from the east in 796. Switzerland was a part of the original possession of the Frankish Empire, included in the regions known as Burgundy and Alamannia and it was administered primarily under Neustria. (Ref. 137 )