Chapter 10: An Excerpt from Lords of Aquitaine: a history from 9th to 15th Century by Professor Benedict De Poitou-Hughes (Emeritus Professeur de Sorbonne)
1st Published 2005 (2nd Edition)
897-912 AD: Europa-the unquiet continent
The next fifteen years were to be characterised by the continuing turmoil in the Christian kingdoms all around West Francia and its sibling, Aquitaine. Like Alexander of Macedon before him, Charles the Great of the Franks would have been spinning in his grave if he had been able to see what a legacy his descendants had made of his conquests. ‘The age of war’ as it came to be known was characterised by the pitiless feuding between the Carolingian successor monarchs, the relentless march of the Saracens in Hispania and elsewhere and ceaseless Viking raids all along the European and Britannic coasts and much further inland.
Aquitaine Unrest:
In Aquitaine, meanwhile, the war that was started by a petulant Duke Bertaland of Auvergne, to limit the authority of his king, was going badly for the rebels in early 897. The return of the royal army under the famed battle commander and ‘the most puissant and noble lord Gauzbert’ turned the tables decisively against them. In addition the Duke of Aquitaine mobilised his own levies against his age-old foe, Duke Gartzia, with the attention of returning the rich county of Agen, at last, to his own de jure demesne.
Frigid at 14...tsk tsk
Stopping only briefly in his own lands to see to the personal matter of his teenage daughter Gerberge’s wishes to take holy orders, the fighting duke descended on Gascony like an avenging angel, linking up with his Saracen Marshal Mukhtar of Saintes and the Poitevin and Aquitainian power numbering some two thousand men at arms. With a combined force of three and a half thousand there was to be but one outcome so one can imagine the thunderbolt that struck Gauzbert when he was summarily ordered by the young king, in May, to cease hostilities as an ‘agreement in amity’ had been reached between all parties.
We can only but conjecture what the Duke must have felt as there have been no surviving records of the Aquitaine Chronicle from that period-indeed it is a source of great frustration that Gauzbert was not as conscientious in maintaining it as his forebears and descendants. We can only imagine that the unwanted turn of events would have set off one of his rare but famed towering rages and imagine him storming around his command tent even as he was putting the cities of Agen to the sword.
On the 11th September 897 Pope Honorius II died and was succeeded by a man even older: the new 69 year old Pope Constantine II who held Duke Gauzbert (but not his king) in very high esteem indeed.
Towards the end of the year Charles IV wasted no time in despatching his most trusted baron and Chancellor into the land of his enemies: Armagnac-his task to mollify and smooth his master’s path with Duke Gartzia. We know that Gauzbert spent many months at the Capitol of Auch and though we have no record of exactly what passed between them we do have letters from Gartzia to his liege dated from early 898 that describe The Duke of Aquitaine as ‘our most beloved friend and ally’.
Still got it!
Something must have worked and it is testament indeed to Gauzbert’s powers of diplomacy that not only was he able to smooth the waters between his king and the fractious Basque lord but by the end of 898, when his embassy was ended, Duke Gartzia was restored as marshal and made designated regent should anything befall him. Again quite what Gauzbert was to make of this snub from his King is anyone’s guess-it cannot have been good…
An interlude in the Ducal lands
A brief return to Saintes to order his affairs and no doubt to console his twenty year old daughter Ermessinde whose husband, King Ordoño II of Asturias had come to a most wicked end at the hands of one of his brother’s murderer’s. The new King, Artal promptly, of course expelled this throwback from the previous reign. It is said that Gauzbert, upon witnessing the hysterical weeping of his traumatised eldest girl, vowed everlasting revenge upon the Hispanic ruler and all of his descendants.
How dare they!
At the same time his wife was warning him of various plots to either present various lords as alternatives to his designated successor, Aldebert, or in one case, at least, a plot framed by his own son Jourdain’s wife, Ermengarde, to kill him. This was one of the occasions where Gauzbert’s quiet diplomacy and visits in person to the nefarious parties was able to defuse matters well in advance. The Duke was a patient man but that patience was to know its limits as his own niece and indeed nephew were to find out in later years.
Stop it!
His sojourn in his own lands was not to last as at the turn of the century Gauzbert, once more, found himself in the field at the head of the Royal army of Aquitaine in support of Carloman’s endless wars to subdue his own barons of West Francia.
Dear me-when will it end?
The ‘Traitor twice over!’
It was said that when Charles IV became angry, which for him was often, he would shake with rage and stammer almost uncontrollably. One can imagine, then, his state as he dictated this letter to his unfortunate scribe:
The damnable churl and villein! He has impugned me and taken me at my mercy once too often-he is a traitor twice over and I command you, by all that is holy, to wage unstinting war on this ingrate and cease not until he is brought in chains before me.
In this you have all the power that I hold and are to be my strong and vengeful right hand in the field. Let the Gascons and the Basques tremble before the fighting Duke and his King.
Carolus Quartus Rex
Gartzia-the weasel-faced churl!
Such was the despatch that greeted an incredulous Gauzbert, now in Holland at the head of his liege’s forces. A quick turnaround and forced march south-it must to him and his veterans, been like déjà vu as they proceeded south once more that February 890.
Gascogne Independence War February to December 900
This war was prosecuted in almost exactly the same vein as the last. Gauzbert linked his Royal army with that of his Aquitaine and Poitevin levies under Marshal Mukhtar. This time the Duke urgently requested his allies, Count Foucher of Foix, his sister’s husband and Count Guillaume of Limousin, his wife’s ten year old grandson-the heir of the erstwhile spymaster of Aquitaine Loup, who had died suddenly from pneumonia a few years previously.
Foix promised help and despatched four hundred men at arms to join with the Aquitainians whereas the Council of the young Count of Limousin declined to assist. This must have been hurtful to Gauzbert given the close ties between the lords that had existed both under his uncle and his cousin.
As if you would refuse me cousin!!
By June the combined levies of Gauzbert numbered over three thousand and were besieging Cahors in Agen whilst the Gascons totalling only a little over half that sat off in next-door Bordeaux. They could not avoid battle forever however and by a clever ruse Gauzbert made it appear that the main force remained at the siege of Cahors but had secretly at night detached the main body of his troops and force marched them across the border. By the time the Gascons realised what was afoot they had been run to ground by Gauzbert’s hard marching power and were brought to battle at Blaye where three thousand four hundred royal and Poitevin/Aquitainian troops met the seventeen hundred Gascon/Basques led in person by Duke Gartzia himself. At last the two finest warriors of the land had the chance to cross swords and test their mettle one against the other.
Crush them!
With his superior numbers Gauzbert, no mean battle commander, could hardly fail and executed a classic fix and strike-fixing Gartzia’s forces with his heavy and light infantry whilst his over four hundred horse, who had been stationed to the extreme left flank swung in and turned Gartzia’s right to bloody ruin. The Gascons lost over a thousand to the three hundred on the royal side-a decisive victory. Gartzia himself fled the fighting to organise the remnants of his defences.
The remorseless attacks continued with Mukhtar assaulting into Marsan whilst Gauzbert and his royalists headed back west to bring Agen to heel. The war was, of course unwinnable but the real question was whether Gauzbert would conquer Agen in time to force it back into his demesne. In the event, on the 3rd December 900, Gartzia cannily surrendered with no conditions, was brought in chains before his King at Bellac and thrown into the dungeons immediately but not before he ordered Gartzia’s teenage son flogged before the pitying crowds at the capital-a heinous act that earned him the sobriquet ‘Charles the Cruel’.
Trouble in Nantes July 901-November 902
It was at this time that trouble closer to home reared its ugly head. It took the form of an unholy alliance between Gauzbert’s niece on his recently deceased brother Èbles’s side-the erstwhile Count of Nantes had died bedridden and infirm at the age of 52. Gauzbert, by contrast, seemed to still have the vim and vigour of a man half his age and was going strong at 55. Èbles had left a single daughter, Adelaide to inherit his County. Meantime Ramnulf the younger, the naturalised bastard son of Gauzbert’s eldest brother, started agitating, at this time, to place himself as a competitor to his half brother Aldebert.
One might have imagined that given the summary treatment of Geoffrey of Thouars that these two close members of the family might have been a little more circumspect but apparently not for in July 901 Gauzbert ordered Adelaide to hand back her titles. He was within his rights, of course, as her overlord but she decided to fight.
You ungrateful wench! Have at thee!
At the same time ample evidence has been uncovered describing a plot had been hatched by Duchess Belleassez to do away with Ramnulf by murder. Many of the great and the good both Poitevin and Aquitainian were implicated which rather reinforces the general impression that the unlanded son of Gauzbert’s brother was delusional. Nonetheless the Duke must have seen enough of a threat to his succession plans to strike at both.
I never did like the bastard...
The war against the ‘tyranny of Duke Gauzbert’ lasted until November 902, if war it could be called. Adelaide was neither able to draw upon the support of any allies and nor did she have battle commanders of the likes of Onfoy de Saint Savin or Otton de Mirabeau, the two generals most likely to be commanding the left and right wings of Mukhtar’s armies. That the conflict dragged on for sixteen long months was purely down to the need to besiege and starve out each and every donjon and holdfast that Adelaide possessed-a slow and laborious process given the lack of siege weaponry or sheer weight of manpower to overcome them by direct assault.
Now-what were you saying strumpet!
Adelaide was duly stripped of her titles and thrown into confinement, though a comfortable one but the other part of Gauzbert’s counter plotting, namely the murder of Ramnulf, didn’t go quite so smoothly when one of the courtiers that he had drawn into the ploy spilled more than just his guts one drunken night and let all who were in earshot know of what had been planned. Angered as the Duke might have been the uncovering of so many names willing to support Gauzbert in his nephew’s murder was proof enough, if any were needed, that meddling in the matters of a worthy successor to the Ducal fiefs was just not worth it. Ramnulf the younger duly disappeared into obscurity and is not seen again in any records.
Let's see how well that mouth functions without it's tongue you blabbermouth!
Consolidation 902-906
For the fighting Duke, ever more stressed at trying to ensure his legacy and that of his eldest brother there was consolidation and a watchful eye on what remained of his Breton neighbours to the north.
One event, however, was to once more throw him at the mercy of the whims of his sovereign and that was the death in August 904 of King Carloman, who had been struggling with poor health for some months. Carloman had a son but, in an uncanny echo of one of his forebears the child had died, sickly, only a few months before his sire. The net result was that his liege Charles IV of Aquitaine became Charles III of West Francia and suddenly, like Duke Ramnulf before him, Gauzbert was operating in a much bigger realm, with much more at stake.
We are whole again: rejoice!!
In a few short years he had seen Mortain re-conquered by the victorious Franks, his niece, Adelaide released from prison and daughter, Ermessinde, granted her wish to remarry with an excellent match being found in the sixteen year old Prince Alvaro of Asturias.
Awwww-How could I say no?
He had, at the same time ennobled two of his most loyal retainers: the generals Onfoy de Saint Savin who was titled Count of Thouars and Otton de Mirebeau who was made Count of Nantes. With the stark words ‘what can be given can so too be taken away’ both of these paladins immediately let it be known that they unconditionally supported their lord in his choice of successor-there were to be no more challenges to Gauzbert’s authority on this matter.
On the 5th August 906 Count Arc’hantael of Roazhon died of pneumonia, thus taking with him perhaps the last vestiges of hope that a concerted Breton resistance to the slow dismemberment of their ancient kingdom.
Duke Gauzbert turned avaricious eyes to his north and instructed Aldebert to redouble his efforts:
‘Turn to it nephew so that you may, when Duke, enjoy the fruits of thine own labour. Leon is next and when I am gone it is my most fervent wish that you may crown yourself Duke of Brittany such that all in West Francia may tremble at the power of the De Poitous!’
Rousing stuff indeed but if Gauzbert, now 60, was to think that he could now rest on his laurels he was to be rudely disabused of such fanciful notions by events far to the south.
This King will be the death of me...
Gauzbert the ‘Saracen-bane’ 906-909
Historians have long debated the motivation that led to Duke Gauzbert’s last appointment for his King. Was it because he was the best man for the job at the venerable age of 60 or were there more sinister reasons to ascribe to Charles’s appointment of his most noble ‘friend and ally’ as Lord Commander of the West Frankish armies that were to march south and do battle with the self styled ‘Emir of Africa’, Sultan Muhammad III of the Aghlabid Sultanate? This insolent Muslim prince who controlled most of what is now Libya and Tunisia had decided to launch holy war to claim the Balearic Islands, held under the fief of the Duke of Barcelona.
So how was the mighty kingdom of West Francia, now whole again, to respond? Would the affronted King send his most vigorous generals or even ascribe the task to the Lord Marshal of his kingdom? Apparently not, it would seem, as the task of putting the Emir firmly in his place was, instead, assigned to none other than the fighting Duke himself. It was a duty that ‘weighed most heavy’ according to secret letters sent by Belleassez to Aldebert ‘for my lord is grievous tired and desires nothing more than to lay himself to repose within the soft embrace of my arms.’
There is some evidence too that the Duchess was using her influence to try and sway the king to recall the old warrior as records state that several ‘secret embassages were brought before the king to plead to his charity and kindnesses for to lay the dove of peace before the Duke but always the king did turn his face away nowise in change of his mind…’
If Gauzbert was aware of any of this he did not show it, instead in the fall of 906 commanding a large force of soldiery into the County of Barcelona to attack one of the two Mussulmen armies that had embarked on Frankish soil. The other was a larger force that had landed in Menorca and was laying waste to the Island.
Meanwhile in November 906 Charles was at last delivered a son and heir, a boy called Louis to be nursed and fussed over by his adoring elder sisters, little three year old Adelaide and her much older sister the thirteen year old princess Bertha.
The fighting Duke, for his part, fought town-by-town, holdfast-by-holdfast and keep-by-keep to restore Barcelona and its environs to Christian rule. It was hard and painstaking work with the fanatical north Africans providing a fearsome enemy.
By the autumn of 908, two long years later, Gauzbert had achieved this primary aim-next it would be time to turn his armies to the vanquished and cowed Balearic Islands.
Meanwhile the Christian kings and queens of Europe continued to fight and war amongst themselves:
The great and the good of Christian Europe..apparently!
1st Published 2005 (2nd Edition)
897-912 AD: Europa-the unquiet continent
The next fifteen years were to be characterised by the continuing turmoil in the Christian kingdoms all around West Francia and its sibling, Aquitaine. Like Alexander of Macedon before him, Charles the Great of the Franks would have been spinning in his grave if he had been able to see what a legacy his descendants had made of his conquests. ‘The age of war’ as it came to be known was characterised by the pitiless feuding between the Carolingian successor monarchs, the relentless march of the Saracens in Hispania and elsewhere and ceaseless Viking raids all along the European and Britannic coasts and much further inland.
Aquitaine Unrest:
In Aquitaine, meanwhile, the war that was started by a petulant Duke Bertaland of Auvergne, to limit the authority of his king, was going badly for the rebels in early 897. The return of the royal army under the famed battle commander and ‘the most puissant and noble lord Gauzbert’ turned the tables decisively against them. In addition the Duke of Aquitaine mobilised his own levies against his age-old foe, Duke Gartzia, with the attention of returning the rich county of Agen, at last, to his own de jure demesne.
Frigid at 14...tsk tsk
Stopping only briefly in his own lands to see to the personal matter of his teenage daughter Gerberge’s wishes to take holy orders, the fighting duke descended on Gascony like an avenging angel, linking up with his Saracen Marshal Mukhtar of Saintes and the Poitevin and Aquitainian power numbering some two thousand men at arms. With a combined force of three and a half thousand there was to be but one outcome so one can imagine the thunderbolt that struck Gauzbert when he was summarily ordered by the young king, in May, to cease hostilities as an ‘agreement in amity’ had been reached between all parties.
We can only but conjecture what the Duke must have felt as there have been no surviving records of the Aquitaine Chronicle from that period-indeed it is a source of great frustration that Gauzbert was not as conscientious in maintaining it as his forebears and descendants. We can only imagine that the unwanted turn of events would have set off one of his rare but famed towering rages and imagine him storming around his command tent even as he was putting the cities of Agen to the sword.
On the 11th September 897 Pope Honorius II died and was succeeded by a man even older: the new 69 year old Pope Constantine II who held Duke Gauzbert (but not his king) in very high esteem indeed.
Towards the end of the year Charles IV wasted no time in despatching his most trusted baron and Chancellor into the land of his enemies: Armagnac-his task to mollify and smooth his master’s path with Duke Gartzia. We know that Gauzbert spent many months at the Capitol of Auch and though we have no record of exactly what passed between them we do have letters from Gartzia to his liege dated from early 898 that describe The Duke of Aquitaine as ‘our most beloved friend and ally’.
Still got it!
Something must have worked and it is testament indeed to Gauzbert’s powers of diplomacy that not only was he able to smooth the waters between his king and the fractious Basque lord but by the end of 898, when his embassy was ended, Duke Gartzia was restored as marshal and made designated regent should anything befall him. Again quite what Gauzbert was to make of this snub from his King is anyone’s guess-it cannot have been good…
An interlude in the Ducal lands
A brief return to Saintes to order his affairs and no doubt to console his twenty year old daughter Ermessinde whose husband, King Ordoño II of Asturias had come to a most wicked end at the hands of one of his brother’s murderer’s. The new King, Artal promptly, of course expelled this throwback from the previous reign. It is said that Gauzbert, upon witnessing the hysterical weeping of his traumatised eldest girl, vowed everlasting revenge upon the Hispanic ruler and all of his descendants.
How dare they!
At the same time his wife was warning him of various plots to either present various lords as alternatives to his designated successor, Aldebert, or in one case, at least, a plot framed by his own son Jourdain’s wife, Ermengarde, to kill him. This was one of the occasions where Gauzbert’s quiet diplomacy and visits in person to the nefarious parties was able to defuse matters well in advance. The Duke was a patient man but that patience was to know its limits as his own niece and indeed nephew were to find out in later years.
Stop it!
His sojourn in his own lands was not to last as at the turn of the century Gauzbert, once more, found himself in the field at the head of the Royal army of Aquitaine in support of Carloman’s endless wars to subdue his own barons of West Francia.
Dear me-when will it end?
The ‘Traitor twice over!’
It was said that when Charles IV became angry, which for him was often, he would shake with rage and stammer almost uncontrollably. One can imagine, then, his state as he dictated this letter to his unfortunate scribe:
The damnable churl and villein! He has impugned me and taken me at my mercy once too often-he is a traitor twice over and I command you, by all that is holy, to wage unstinting war on this ingrate and cease not until he is brought in chains before me.
In this you have all the power that I hold and are to be my strong and vengeful right hand in the field. Let the Gascons and the Basques tremble before the fighting Duke and his King.
Carolus Quartus Rex
Gartzia-the weasel-faced churl!
Such was the despatch that greeted an incredulous Gauzbert, now in Holland at the head of his liege’s forces. A quick turnaround and forced march south-it must to him and his veterans, been like déjà vu as they proceeded south once more that February 890.
Gascogne Independence War February to December 900
This war was prosecuted in almost exactly the same vein as the last. Gauzbert linked his Royal army with that of his Aquitaine and Poitevin levies under Marshal Mukhtar. This time the Duke urgently requested his allies, Count Foucher of Foix, his sister’s husband and Count Guillaume of Limousin, his wife’s ten year old grandson-the heir of the erstwhile spymaster of Aquitaine Loup, who had died suddenly from pneumonia a few years previously.
Foix promised help and despatched four hundred men at arms to join with the Aquitainians whereas the Council of the young Count of Limousin declined to assist. This must have been hurtful to Gauzbert given the close ties between the lords that had existed both under his uncle and his cousin.
As if you would refuse me cousin!!
By June the combined levies of Gauzbert numbered over three thousand and were besieging Cahors in Agen whilst the Gascons totalling only a little over half that sat off in next-door Bordeaux. They could not avoid battle forever however and by a clever ruse Gauzbert made it appear that the main force remained at the siege of Cahors but had secretly at night detached the main body of his troops and force marched them across the border. By the time the Gascons realised what was afoot they had been run to ground by Gauzbert’s hard marching power and were brought to battle at Blaye where three thousand four hundred royal and Poitevin/Aquitainian troops met the seventeen hundred Gascon/Basques led in person by Duke Gartzia himself. At last the two finest warriors of the land had the chance to cross swords and test their mettle one against the other.
Crush them!
With his superior numbers Gauzbert, no mean battle commander, could hardly fail and executed a classic fix and strike-fixing Gartzia’s forces with his heavy and light infantry whilst his over four hundred horse, who had been stationed to the extreme left flank swung in and turned Gartzia’s right to bloody ruin. The Gascons lost over a thousand to the three hundred on the royal side-a decisive victory. Gartzia himself fled the fighting to organise the remnants of his defences.
The remorseless attacks continued with Mukhtar assaulting into Marsan whilst Gauzbert and his royalists headed back west to bring Agen to heel. The war was, of course unwinnable but the real question was whether Gauzbert would conquer Agen in time to force it back into his demesne. In the event, on the 3rd December 900, Gartzia cannily surrendered with no conditions, was brought in chains before his King at Bellac and thrown into the dungeons immediately but not before he ordered Gartzia’s teenage son flogged before the pitying crowds at the capital-a heinous act that earned him the sobriquet ‘Charles the Cruel’.
Trouble in Nantes July 901-November 902
It was at this time that trouble closer to home reared its ugly head. It took the form of an unholy alliance between Gauzbert’s niece on his recently deceased brother Èbles’s side-the erstwhile Count of Nantes had died bedridden and infirm at the age of 52. Gauzbert, by contrast, seemed to still have the vim and vigour of a man half his age and was going strong at 55. Èbles had left a single daughter, Adelaide to inherit his County. Meantime Ramnulf the younger, the naturalised bastard son of Gauzbert’s eldest brother, started agitating, at this time, to place himself as a competitor to his half brother Aldebert.
One might have imagined that given the summary treatment of Geoffrey of Thouars that these two close members of the family might have been a little more circumspect but apparently not for in July 901 Gauzbert ordered Adelaide to hand back her titles. He was within his rights, of course, as her overlord but she decided to fight.
You ungrateful wench! Have at thee!
At the same time ample evidence has been uncovered describing a plot had been hatched by Duchess Belleassez to do away with Ramnulf by murder. Many of the great and the good both Poitevin and Aquitainian were implicated which rather reinforces the general impression that the unlanded son of Gauzbert’s brother was delusional. Nonetheless the Duke must have seen enough of a threat to his succession plans to strike at both.
I never did like the bastard...
The war against the ‘tyranny of Duke Gauzbert’ lasted until November 902, if war it could be called. Adelaide was neither able to draw upon the support of any allies and nor did she have battle commanders of the likes of Onfoy de Saint Savin or Otton de Mirabeau, the two generals most likely to be commanding the left and right wings of Mukhtar’s armies. That the conflict dragged on for sixteen long months was purely down to the need to besiege and starve out each and every donjon and holdfast that Adelaide possessed-a slow and laborious process given the lack of siege weaponry or sheer weight of manpower to overcome them by direct assault.
Now-what were you saying strumpet!
Adelaide was duly stripped of her titles and thrown into confinement, though a comfortable one but the other part of Gauzbert’s counter plotting, namely the murder of Ramnulf, didn’t go quite so smoothly when one of the courtiers that he had drawn into the ploy spilled more than just his guts one drunken night and let all who were in earshot know of what had been planned. Angered as the Duke might have been the uncovering of so many names willing to support Gauzbert in his nephew’s murder was proof enough, if any were needed, that meddling in the matters of a worthy successor to the Ducal fiefs was just not worth it. Ramnulf the younger duly disappeared into obscurity and is not seen again in any records.
Let's see how well that mouth functions without it's tongue you blabbermouth!
Consolidation 902-906
For the fighting Duke, ever more stressed at trying to ensure his legacy and that of his eldest brother there was consolidation and a watchful eye on what remained of his Breton neighbours to the north.
One event, however, was to once more throw him at the mercy of the whims of his sovereign and that was the death in August 904 of King Carloman, who had been struggling with poor health for some months. Carloman had a son but, in an uncanny echo of one of his forebears the child had died, sickly, only a few months before his sire. The net result was that his liege Charles IV of Aquitaine became Charles III of West Francia and suddenly, like Duke Ramnulf before him, Gauzbert was operating in a much bigger realm, with much more at stake.
We are whole again: rejoice!!
In a few short years he had seen Mortain re-conquered by the victorious Franks, his niece, Adelaide released from prison and daughter, Ermessinde, granted her wish to remarry with an excellent match being found in the sixteen year old Prince Alvaro of Asturias.
Awwww-How could I say no?
He had, at the same time ennobled two of his most loyal retainers: the generals Onfoy de Saint Savin who was titled Count of Thouars and Otton de Mirebeau who was made Count of Nantes. With the stark words ‘what can be given can so too be taken away’ both of these paladins immediately let it be known that they unconditionally supported their lord in his choice of successor-there were to be no more challenges to Gauzbert’s authority on this matter.
On the 5th August 906 Count Arc’hantael of Roazhon died of pneumonia, thus taking with him perhaps the last vestiges of hope that a concerted Breton resistance to the slow dismemberment of their ancient kingdom.
Duke Gauzbert turned avaricious eyes to his north and instructed Aldebert to redouble his efforts:
‘Turn to it nephew so that you may, when Duke, enjoy the fruits of thine own labour. Leon is next and when I am gone it is my most fervent wish that you may crown yourself Duke of Brittany such that all in West Francia may tremble at the power of the De Poitous!’
Rousing stuff indeed but if Gauzbert, now 60, was to think that he could now rest on his laurels he was to be rudely disabused of such fanciful notions by events far to the south.
This King will be the death of me...
Gauzbert the ‘Saracen-bane’ 906-909
Historians have long debated the motivation that led to Duke Gauzbert’s last appointment for his King. Was it because he was the best man for the job at the venerable age of 60 or were there more sinister reasons to ascribe to Charles’s appointment of his most noble ‘friend and ally’ as Lord Commander of the West Frankish armies that were to march south and do battle with the self styled ‘Emir of Africa’, Sultan Muhammad III of the Aghlabid Sultanate? This insolent Muslim prince who controlled most of what is now Libya and Tunisia had decided to launch holy war to claim the Balearic Islands, held under the fief of the Duke of Barcelona.
So how was the mighty kingdom of West Francia, now whole again, to respond? Would the affronted King send his most vigorous generals or even ascribe the task to the Lord Marshal of his kingdom? Apparently not, it would seem, as the task of putting the Emir firmly in his place was, instead, assigned to none other than the fighting Duke himself. It was a duty that ‘weighed most heavy’ according to secret letters sent by Belleassez to Aldebert ‘for my lord is grievous tired and desires nothing more than to lay himself to repose within the soft embrace of my arms.’
There is some evidence too that the Duchess was using her influence to try and sway the king to recall the old warrior as records state that several ‘secret embassages were brought before the king to plead to his charity and kindnesses for to lay the dove of peace before the Duke but always the king did turn his face away nowise in change of his mind…’
If Gauzbert was aware of any of this he did not show it, instead in the fall of 906 commanding a large force of soldiery into the County of Barcelona to attack one of the two Mussulmen armies that had embarked on Frankish soil. The other was a larger force that had landed in Menorca and was laying waste to the Island.
Meanwhile in November 906 Charles was at last delivered a son and heir, a boy called Louis to be nursed and fussed over by his adoring elder sisters, little three year old Adelaide and her much older sister the thirteen year old princess Bertha.
The fighting Duke, for his part, fought town-by-town, holdfast-by-holdfast and keep-by-keep to restore Barcelona and its environs to Christian rule. It was hard and painstaking work with the fanatical north Africans providing a fearsome enemy.
By the autumn of 908, two long years later, Gauzbert had achieved this primary aim-next it would be time to turn his armies to the vanquished and cowed Balearic Islands.
Meanwhile the Christian kings and queens of Europe continued to fight and war amongst themselves:
The great and the good of Christian Europe..apparently!
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