As I listened to Paul Bellantoni narrate Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry’s new book, Oathbreakers, I kept having to pause at the thought that the history the authors recount happened nearly 1,200 years ago. 1,200 years ago. That we can know as much as we do about the personalities and actions of the people discussed in this book is a small miracle to me.
Like many Americans, my education in history until I hit college and had access to a lot more information (and nuance) was highly episodic. I learned history in the form of a highlights reel: Sumer to Ancient Egypt, a bit of Greece then Rome, the high Middle Ages, the Renaissance, etc., etc. The period after the Roman Empire split but before the Norman invasion in 1066 was basically a blank spot. Oathbreakers fills in some of that blank spot by recounting the meteoric rise and fall of the Carolingian Empire. Gabriele and Perry use as much of the extant annals and literature as possible, supplemented by later scholarship, for their account. I would’ve loved hearing the words of the people who experienced these events anyway but I love that Bellantoni sometimes puts on voices to really make these excerpts sing (especially the dream tale partially narrated by a demon named Wiggo). One of the major points that the authors emphasize is that while the contemporary documents may not be accurate, they all contain a measure of truth about the world the writers experienced. Even the demon dream reveals how much turmoil there was in an empire ruled by people who let their human foibles and failings get in the way of good government.
To briefly sum up, Charlemagne was crowned emperor by the pope on Christmas day, 800 CE. His father, Pepin the Short, had out-governed and outmaneuvered the preceding Merovingians to create a found the Carolingian kingdom that Charlemagne expanded. This empire covered nearly all of modern France, the Netherlands, most of modern Germany and Austria, and a bit of northern Spain. The empire passed to Louis the Pious in 814 but trouble started almost immediately. The Carolingians, you see, had too many sons—too many ambitious sons. One might think that one could be satisfied with the Kingdom of Aquitaine (a huge chunk of southern France) or Lombardy (northern Italy) or Bavaria (at the time this also contained a lot of modern Austria). Louis had apportioned all of these parts of the empire to his sons. Eldest Lothar got Lombardy. Second son Pepin got Aquitaine. Third son Louis got Bavaria and the helpful nickname “the German” to distinguish him from the other Louis. But then, Louis the Pious got remarried and had another son, a son so favored by his father that his brothers started scheming to make sure they got as much of the Carolingian pie as possible.
Oathbreakers relates the multiple civil wars cooked up by various combinations of the sons of Louis the Pious until he kicked off in 840 CE. Gabriele and Perry do an amazing job of explaining how different warfare was in the Carolingian Empire. I was surprised at how little death there was (there was bloodshed because the Carolingians were fond of blinding their enemies). The last audiobook I finished was Shelby Foote’s three-part history of the American Civil War, The Civil War: A Narrative. Major battles in the American Civil War saw tens of thousands of casualties but, a thousand years (!) earlier, battles helmed by the sons of Louis the Pious and their generals sometimes only saw bloodshed if the armies accidentally surprised each other while getting into position. Gabriele and Perry write that battles like the Battle of Fontenoy in 841 CE, where an unknown but apparently large number of people were killed, were very much the exception. I got the impression that the loss of life was so big that everyone got so freaked out that dividing the empire up among the brothers (the Treaty of Verdun, which divvied up the territory, was signed in 843) was the better course of action than letting them fight it out any more.
Gabriele and Perry are clear when they have to theorize what happened. They note when the annals have gaps, some of which are suspicious and some of which may have been lost over the course of, again, 1,200 years have passed. I wonder what details we’re missing because this is a wild story, full of huge personalities, jealousies, bad decisions, brief witch-hunting, smear campaigns, and trusting the wrong people just from what Gabriele and Perry were able to find in the extant documents. I learned so much and was so entertained by Oathbreakers that I plan to keep a sharp eye out in the future so that I can snatch up anything else they write.