Medieval French Warfare

The primary problem of this subject is when to start. It cannot be denied that the origins of France lie in the people called the Franks, whose dominion had, since the sixth century, covered much of what is now France and western Germany. This vast Frankland was not often a political unity, because Merovingian kings divided it amongst their sons, often resulting in eastern (Austrasian) and western (Neustrian) kingdoms with each commonly having a share of Aquitaine. But historians are convinced that the Franks, to an unusual degree, had a sense of unity. In 800, Charlemagne, after a career of conquest, welded all Frankland into an empire whose power extended over many of the other peoples of Europe. But in the 840s that empire became divided under his grandchildren, and its western component, under Charles the Bald, bears a considerable resemblance to what we know as France. But it was no natural unity: there was no single language, the lands south of the Loire had a different agriculture and orientations toward Spain or the Mediterranean, or both. By contrast, Rheims and the northeast were subject to the pull of the German Empire, and many of the borderlands like Flanders and Hainaut would be vassals of the emperors and of the French king. Normandy, whose border was only a hundred miles from Paris, would for long form part of an Anglo-Norman realm after 1066. So when and why did the western part emerge as a distinct political unity whose military history can be recounted? Historians have differed, and classic works like Flach 1886–1917 and Lot 1948 (see General Histories of France) tended to see France as an inevitable evolution. In fact, almost all scholars have seen the origins of France in the period after Charlemagne and arising from dynastic quarrels. To fix upon a starting point, it is necessary to look at general histories and to make a judgment as to when we can start the history of France. In this case, the date of 885 has been selected.