Vanished Kingdoms

by Norman Davies

  Encyclopedias form a large category. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (1974) can draw on the phenomenal Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th edition, 1911). It doesn’t disappoint. After describing the ancient Burgundians as ‘Scandinavian’, it gives a brief account of six kingdoms of Burgundy plus the county, plus a duchy, plus the ‘states of Burgundy’, plus the province. The seventh kingdom is at least implied. The only items missing are the Imperial Circle, a duchy, a landgravate, and the province (score 11 : 15).

  The Nouveau Petit Larousse, a household name in France, starts with an unsatisfactory definition: Burgundy, ‘a region in the east of France which is more of a historical than a geographical unity’. But the account that follows covers six kingdoms, plus the county, duchy, ‘states of Burgundy’ and province (score 10 : 15). Still no Imperial Circle. It concludes: ‘Burgundy found itself joined for a long time with Germany. The Kings of France ate into it bit by bit over the centuries.’ This is tremendous news: Larousse is not Francocentric.130

  The international aspect of the problem is crucial. The Burgundian question defies national frontiers. Ideally, one would draw on reference works not just from France, but from Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Each source would naturally be strong on some points and weaker on others.

  A German Brockhaus happens to be to hand. The entry is suitably long and detailed. It distinguishes well between the Burgundy of the present, which is defined as ‘a Region made up of four French departments’, and five Burgundies of the past: the Koenigreich der Burgunder, from 443, the Burgundia of the Franks, from 534, the Koenigreich Burgund (Arelat), the Herzogtum Burgund, that is, the duchy, and the Freigrafschaft Burgund (Franche-Comté). In explaining the genesis of the Arelat, Brockhaus also mentions Boso’s ‘Kingdom of Lower Burgundy’ (score 7 : 15). Surprisingly, no Imperial Circle.131

  Seeking impartiality, one turns to a country with no direct links to Burgundy. An old copy of the Wielka Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN is also to hand. It transpires that the Poles still use the Latin form, Burgundia. The EP describes it as a ‘historical land (kraina historyczna) in eastern France’, and ‘an important region for wine production’. But the long, solid, historical summary contains few deficiencies. One meets ‘the 5th Century Kingdom of the Germanic Burgundians’; the kingdoms of Upper Burgundy, of Lower Burgundy, and of Arles; and from 1032 ‘a kingdom within the structure of Germany’. Five out of a possible seven is good. ‘The name of Burgundy’, it continues, ‘was only preserved… in the Free County (Franche-Comté) which had belonged to Germany until 1382.’ This statement is inaccurate, but the general narrative stays on course. ‘The Duchy’s period of greatness was launched by the rule of Filip Śmiały [Philip the Bold],’ it says. And it does not stop, as many accounts do, with the last of the Valois duke-counts: ‘After the death of Charles the Bold in 1477, his sole heiress, Marie, married the Archduke of Austria Maximilian; and a new partition of B. resulted. France recovered the Duchy of B. plus Picardy. The Habsburgs took the Netherlands plus Franche-Comté, which eventually returned to France in 1678’.132 (Score 9 : 15.) Still no Imperial Circle.

  For people without French, German or Polish, the highest hopes have to be reserved for a recently published Gazetteer of the World, produced by a prestigious American institution. It specializes in the descriptions of geographical places and historical territories: ‘Burgundy (BUHR-ghun-dee), Fr. Bourgogne (BOORGON-yuh), historic region and former province of E central and E France. The name applies to 2 successive anc. kingdoms and to a duchy, all embracing a territory larger than the 17th–18th cent. prov. After 1790, it was divided into depts. Present-day, it forms one of France’s new administrative regions’. So far, not too bad (score 5 : 15). Before long, however, the anachronisms creep in: ‘Conquered by Caesar in his Gallic Wars, it was later settled (5th cent. A.D.) by Burgundians, a Germanic tribe, who established the First Kingdom of Burgundy.’ Times and places are wrongly associated, and convoluted misconceptions proliferate:

  Partitioned during the Merovingian and Carolingian era, it was reunited (933) in the Second Kingdom comprising Cisjurane Burgundy (already known as Provence) in the S and Transjurane Burgundy (N). Soon a smaller duchy of Burgundy was created by Emperor Charles II and absorbed (1034) into the Holy Roman Empire. The duchy entered its golden age under Philip the Good and came to include most of the present Neth., Belgium, and N and E France.

  The word ‘soon’ shows the editors trying to climb desperately from the mire. The chronology is topsy-turvy, the nomenclature scrambled, and the absorption of the duchy into the Holy Roman Empire imaginary. Fortunately, a partial recovery is staged in the final section:

  During 15th cent. Burgundy was… an artistic center outshining the rest of the continent. The wars of ambitious Charles the Bold, however, proved ruinous… His daughter, Mary of Burgundy, by marrying Emperor Maximilian I, brought most of the expanded Burgundy (but not the Fr. duchy) to the house of Hapsburg. The duchy was seized by Louis XI who made it into a Fr. Prov… Burgundy now lies astride the main Paris-Lyon-Marseilles RR and auto routes.133

  (Score: hard to calculate.)

  So what is the information-seeker to do? Taken together, the ‘recognized authorities’ are really no less imperfect than any others. The Internet, like any other library, contains works of varying value. Like all sources, it has to be used with critical vigilance, but it is not markedly inferior. Analytical studies have shown that Wikipedia, for all its faults, can sometimes match the most prestigious academic brands. It has the virtue of being constantly corrected and updated.134

  The search, in fact, need never end. The indefatigable may wish to go on and explore the multi-authored composite historical works, often recommended for reference purposes. Unfortunately, the relevant chapter in the composite New Cambridge Medieval History does not open too promisingly. ‘The region known as Burgundy’, it begins, ‘has had some of the most elastic borders of any region of France.’ Once again, Burgundy is conceived in its limited French form. Medievalists, above all, should take more care.135

  Other searchers may try their luck with the romantically titled works of yesteryear. The Lost Kingdom of Burgundy, for example, which hovers between fact and fiction, opens with a flourish. ‘On such a night as this,’ the first sentence whispers conspiratorially, ‘Charles of Burgundy rode to his death. He lost an empire, monsieur, because he dare not rescue a beautiful woman.’ A few pages later, it gets worse: ‘The kingdom lives because its motley kings, tatterdemalion warriors, guitar-playing swashbucklers, and mace-wielding choristers have refused to remain in their moldy tombs.’ Then, on page 8, one meets a sentence for which all can be forgiven. ‘The ancient Burgundy was, and is, something quite apart from the France that enveloped it – a sort of Atlantis engulfed beneath seas upon seas of new people.’ The author possessed the priceless gift of imaginative sympathy which so many more prestigious compilations lack. And he produced another great line. ‘Moonlight’, he wrote, ‘is the great restorer of vanished kingdoms.’136

  * The author of that assessment, R. Lane Poole, sometime editor of the English Historical Review and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, wrestled manfully with the problem. His Notes on Burgundy, written before the First World War, could easily be dismissed as dry-as-dust delvings. Yet they brim with suppressed excitement as he compares ambiguous references in little-known charters and chronicles, or admires the precision with which Flodoard of Reims distinguishes between three people, all with the same name. Two of his studies embark on investigative detective work, trying to establish the identities of men whose full names have not been recorded. One study deals with ‘a duke near the Alps’, who reportedly married a daughter of the English king, Edward the Elder (r. 899–924); the other deals with a Burgundian known only as Hugo Cisalpinus. Was it Hugh the Black, or Hugh the White, or possibly Hugh, nephew of Hugh of Italy? Neither pursuit is successful. The pleasure lies in the chase.

  * In the preceding period, the name of France had rar
ely been used except for the small region in the Seine valley now known as the Île de France. It was as duc de France in this limited sense that Hugues Capet first rose to prominence. When, on becoming king, he applied the name to the whole of his far larger kingdom, he was giving expression to the political claim that he and his subjects were the only true heirs to the Frankish tradition of Charlemagne and Clovis. His success may be gauged from the fact that the German name of Frankreich, ‘Land of the Franks’, became attached to the western part of Charlemagne’s former empire, but not to the eastern part, which was now being subsumed into the concept of Deutschland. The shift in nomenclature was no doubt facilitated by the indifference of the Ottonian emperors, who as saxons did not take offence at the loss of the Frankish label in the east.

  * The filioque (literally ‘and the Son’) is the central element in the theological doctrine of the Double Procession of the Holy Spirit. Ever since the ninth century the Western Church has held to the view that the Holy Spirit proceeds ‘from the Father and the Son’. The Eastern Church, in contrast, believes in a single fount of the divine Godhead, and in consequence holds to the formula that the Holy Spirit proceeds ‘from the Father and through the Son’. This fine distinction caused no end of difficulties for many hundreds of years.

  4

  Aragon

  A Mediterranean Empire

  (1137–1714)

  I

  Perpignan is the chef-lieu of France’s most southerly department, the Pyrénées-Orientales (dép. 64), one of five such departments within the Region of Languedoc-Roussillon. As the corbeau flies, it is situated 510 miles south-south-west of Paris, close to the Franco-Spanish frontier. In former times it was the provincial capital of historic Roussillon, which today borders the Spanish districts of Lleida and Gerona and the Principality of Andorra. The Côte Vermeille, the ‘Scarlet Coast’, lies immediately adjacent on the Golfe du Lion, 12 miles to the south, and beyond it the Costa Brava. The best way to get there is by TGV Express; fast, luxurious trains leave the Gare de Lyon four times a day for Avignon, and thence along the plain of Languedoc via Montpellier, Béziers and Narbonne. The journey takes 4 hours 45 minutes. Passengers arriving in the daytime are usually greeted by the strong southern sun, which bathes the city on average for 300 days each year.

  Alternatively, one can fly to the regional airport of Perpignan-Rivesaltes, which hosts flights from domestic and international destinations including Paris-Orly, London-Stansted, Charleroi and Southampton. On entering the terminal building, the first poster one sees reads:

  VISITEZ LE CHTEAU DES ROIS PLACE-FORTE D’UN ROYAUME EPHÉMÈRE

  (‘Visit the Castle of the Kings, Fortress of an Ephemeral Kingdom’).1 Few visitors could be expected to know beforehand what the ‘Ephemeral Kingdom’ refers to.

  The old city lies on the southern bank of the River Têt, which is lined by the Boulevard de la France Libre. An inner ring road is formed by the boulevards Foch, Wilson, Briand and Poincaré which surround the imposing medieval citadel. A tangle of narrow streets filled with cafés and restaurants tumbles down towards the river, and is dominated by three squares: place de la Loge, place Verdun and the place Arago (François Arago (1786–1853) was a renowned scientific pioneer of local descent). The railway station is located at the end of the avenue Général de Gaulle.

  Nonetheless, as the tourist websites emphasize, Perpignan has unmistakable foreign flavours. ‘A good part of Perpignan’s population is of Spanish origin,’ one reads, ‘refugees from the Civil War and their descendants. The southern influence is further augmented by a substantial admixture of North Africans, both Arabs and white French settlers repatriated after Algerian independence in 1962.’ ‘While there are few monuments to visit,’ the website continues, ‘Perpignan is an enjoyable city with a lively street life. Its heyday was in the 13th and 14th centuries.’2 The most recommended sights include the medieval Loge de Mer, the cathédrale Saint-Jean, the Palais de la Députation (once the parliament of Roussillon) and, of course, the citadel.

  Nowadays, Perpignan’s Catalan connections are widely publicized and actively promoted. The Castilet Gate is home to a Catalan folk museum called ‘Casa Pairal’. The Office de tourisme promotes the festivals of La Sanch at Easter, of Sant Jordi in April, when sweethearts exchange gifts, and the Festa Major at the summer solstice, which celebrates ‘the spirit of Perpignan la catalane’. It invites public participation in the Catalan national dance, the sardana, flies the Catalan flag alongside the French tricolour, and revels in the city’s sobriquet of La Fidelissima, once awarded to the city for resisting a French king. In short, it takes pride in Perpigna being ‘la capitale de la Catalogne française’. These perspectives, not recognized before the 1980s, ‘have greatly enhanced our heritage’.3

  Perpignan’s local rugby club, the Union Sportive des Arlequins Perpignanais, or ‘USA Perpignan’ for short, plays in the Catalan colours of ‘blood red and gold’. Founded in 1902, it is based at the Stade Aimé Giral, and in 2008–9 won the French champions’ title.4

  As always in France, a concise academic history is on sale. A volume entitled Histoire du Roussillon, written by a maître de conférences at the University of Toulouse, starts with an eloquent invocation of the geographical setting: ‘Roussillon, however, is not just the mountain range brusquely surging from the sea… It is also the coastland of the great “Middle Sea”, with all its burden of history… Roussillon owes both its intensity and the explosion of its destiny to the sea’s presence.’ The story of the province unfolds from ancient times to the contemporary epoch. The birth of Perpignan comes about a third of the way through:

  Originally just a simple Roman villa, it was chosen by certain counts of Roussillon, who established their residence there at the end of the ninth century, thereby supplanting the functions of the adjacent ruined city of Ruscino. The consecration of the parish church of St John the Baptist on 16 March 1025, next to the hall of the count, marks the earliest manifestation of a new political and administrative centre.5

  The physical chessboard on which political life developed here after the collapse of the Roman Empire evidently saw a mass of tiny lordships struggling to exist, trapped between the rising power of the Moorish emirs in Iberia and that of the Frankish kings in the former Gaul. Every other mountaintop sprouted a fortified tower or castle, attesting to a state of affairs in which every larger district had its count and every valley its viscount. As the feudal lords battled to subordinate their neighbours, some lordships thrived and expanded, while others shrivelled. Gradually, as the lesser fry were swallowed up, a few powerful dynasts came to dominate. One of these was Inigo Aristra, the Basque warlord who drove out the Carolingians from the western Pyrenees in the early ninth century, not long after Charlemagne’s campaign against the Moors. A second, in the eleventh century, was Sancho El Mayor, originally ‘King of Pamplona’.

  The narrative grows infernally complicated following the disintegration of the Frankish Empire and of its outlier beyond the eastern Pyrenees, the Marca Hispanica or ‘Spanish March’. The historical record lists a procession of kings, princes and counts, all with unlikely names. Who exactly was Suniaire I, not to mention the long line of Guillaberts, Gausfreds and Guinards? Can Count Raymond Berenguer II (r. 1076–82) really be a different person from Berenguer Raymond II (r. 1076–97)? And are the Raymonds (or Raimunds) different from the Ramóns?

  Seeking answers to these puzzles, one climbs the cobbled streets to Perpignan’s citadel. There, another surprise awaits in the form of an imposing, fortress-like structure called ‘Le Palais des rois’. It is not what one expects from a palace, and looks for all the world like a desert fort from Beau Geste, plucked from the sands of the Sahara. Its garden is adorned with palm trees, and its interior displays an extraordinary mixture of ecclesiastical Gothic arches and exotic Moorish courtyards. Cultural and historical compasses spin out of control. Who were these kings, and where was their kingdom?

  In the summer of 2010 Perpignan
hosted the twenty-third annual ‘Estivales’, a popular festival of music, dance, theatre, circus and cinema. For three weeks in July, hundreds of entertainers presented scores of performances, and tens of thousands of enthusiasts flocked to enjoy them. Large-scale open-air shows took place on the Campo Santo, a purpose-built arena constructed beside the medieval church of St Jean le Vieux; more intimate events were staged in the Cloister of the Minimes. In 2010 the main theme of Mediterranean culture was given an extra African accent. The programmes were headed by the Dunas flamenco group from Seville; the Nederland Dans Theatre, Salif Keita from Mali, Victoria Chaplin’s Invisible Circus, the Africa Umoja Ensemble from South Africa, and singers such as Vanessa Paradis and Alain Souchon.6 Yet many would say that the best of Perpignan was to be discovered on the festival’s fringe by the carefree crowds sipping wine under the stars, munching tapas, applauding the street artists, listening in the park to a gypsy guitarist or an impromptu jazz band, or dreamily dancing till dawn to the scent of hibiscus.

  The Pyrenees, which form a mountain range of spectacular proportions and whose dark outline stood out against the night sky of the festival, provide the permanent backdrop to Perpignan. They run for some 200 miles from sea to sea, from the picturesque painters’ villages of Collioure and Banyuls on the Côte Vermeille to the elegant resorts of Biarritz and Bayonne on the Atlantic shore. In between lie a tangle of craggy ranges, deep verdant valleys, fantastic gorges, elevated plateaux, steep passes, lonely scree fields and deserts, powerful snow-driven rivers, crystal-clear lakes, flower-strewn pastures and, high above the 10,000-foot line, a world of glaciers, snowfields and rugged rock summits. The tallest peaks – the Pic de Aneto (11,168 feet), the Maladeta (10,853 feet) and the Monte Perdido (11,007 feet), to use their Spanish names – all lie in the central section. For more than 350 years, this massive natural barrier has separated France from Spain. With one small exception, in the Vall d’Aran, the Franco-Spanish frontier winds its way along the full length of the Pyrenean ridge.