HISTORY OF EUROPE

The mountain ranges of Europe and Asia

When the great land masses of Africa and India collide with Europe and Asia, about 100 million
years ago, they cause the crust of the earth to crumple upwards in a long almost continuous ridge
of high ground - from the Alps, through Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan to the Himalayas. This
barrier will have a profound influence on human history.
To the south and east of the mountain range are various fertile regions, watered by great rivers
flowing from the mountains. By contrast, north of the mountain range is a continuous strip of
less fertile grasslands - the steppes, on which a horseman can ride almost without interruption
from Mongolia to Moscow.
This unbroken stretch of land north of the mountains, reaching from the Pacific in the east to the
Atlantic in the west, means that the boundary between Asia and Europe is a somewhat vague
concept. Indeed Europe is really the western peninsula of the much larger mass of Asia.
In the south there is a natural barrier, long accepted as a dividing line - formed by the waters of
the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Black Sea. North from here the
boundary is notional. In recent times it has been accepted as passing east from the Black Sea to
the Caspian and then stretching north from the Caspian along the eastern slopes of the Ural
mountains.
The first Europeans: 500,000 - 10,000 years ago
Early man - of the species Homo erectus - penetrates to the western extremity of Europe by about
500,000 years ago. Fossil remains from this time are known as far west as England.
From about 230,000 years ago the human inhabitants of Europe, descendants of Homo erectus,
are sufficiently different in brain size and physique to be classed as an early form of Homo
sapiens. Known as Neanderthal man, this species prospers for many thousands of years. But the
Neanderthalers leave little trace of themselves other than their stone tools, their bones and the
bones of their animal prey (though a recently discovered Neanderthal flute suggests some
cultural life). They are extinct by about 35,000 years ago.
Modern man - anatomically similar to humans today - arrives relatively late in Europe. But the
continent does provide the most extensive evidence of the early culture of our own species of
Homo sapiens.
The Venus of Willendorf (about 25,000 years ago) and the cave paintings of Altamira and
Lascaux (some 15,000 years ago) are merely the most famous examples of a vigorous
palaeolithic art found in many parts of Europe. Similarly the exposed plains of eastern Europe
contain traces of the earliest known free-standing dwellings - circular huts, semi-sunken, with
stones or tusks supporting some form of superstructure.

From villages to towns in Europe: 7000 - 2000 BC

The Neolithic Revolution - introducing village life, the cultivation of crops and the rearing of
animals - arrives in Greece in about 7000 BC from its region of origin in the Middle East. It will
take about 3000 years to spread to the Atlantic coast and Britain, pushing back the way of life of
the hunter-gatherers at an average rate of slightly more than a mile a year.
This slow rate of progress may partly reflect a reluctance of the hunter-gatherers to settle down
to the hard labour of agriculture. But it is due also to the fact that here the labour is indeed hard.
Europe, unlike the Middle East, is heavily forested. Clearing the ground for crops, with stone
tools, is a massive undertaking.
In the Atlantic coastal regions, the transition to neolithic village settlement is marked by the
world's most striking tradition of prehistoric architecture.
In most of Europe neolithic communities live in villages of timber houses, often with a
communal longhouse as the central feature (one, discovered at Bochum in Germany, is some 65
metres in length). But along the entire Atlantic coast, from Spain to Britain and Denmark, the
focus of village life is a communal tomb, around which simple huts are clustered. The tomb
chambers of these regions introduce the tradition of stonework which includes passage graves
and megaliths, also the very solid domestic architecture of Skara Brae.
By the time the whole of Europe has entered the neolithic age, the eastern Mediterranean - where
Africa joins Asia - is literate and civilized. Like farming, civilization spreads by contagion from
Asia to Europe. The point where the two continents meet, round the Aegean Sea, becomes from
around 2000 BC the site of Europe's first civilization - that of Minoan Crete.
Minoan civilization, after several centuries, yields to an incoming group which eventually
provides nearly all the peoples of Europe - the Indo-Europeans.
Indo-Europeans: from 2000 BC
Tribes speaking Indo-European languages, and living as nomadic herdsmen, are well established
by about 2000 BC in the steppes which stretch from the Ukraine eastwards, to the regions north
of the Black Sea and the Caspian.
Over the coming centuries they steadily infiltrate the more appealing regions to the south and
west - occasionally in something akin to open warfare, and invariably no doubt with violence.
But the process is much more gradual than our modern notions of an invading force.
Indo-Europeans in Europe: from 1800 BC
In Europe the first Indo-European tribes to make significant inroads are the Greeks. They move
south into Greece and the Aegean from the 18th century BC.

Gradually other tribes speaking Indo-European languages spread throughout Europe. From an
early date Germans are established in Denmark and southern Sweden. Balts settle along the
southern and eastern coast of the Baltic Sea. Tribes using an Italic group of languages descend
into Italy. Across the centre of Europe the Celts move gradually west through Germany into
France, northern Spain and Britain.
Another wave of migrating Indo-European peoples follows on behind, pressing westwards from
Asia. The Slavs move into the region of Poland and western Russia, between the Vistula and
Dnieper rivers. The Scythians establish themselves in the area to the north of the Black Sea.
Any map will oversimplify patterns of tribal migration, for it must attempt to separate groups
which in reality intermingle and overlap. If there is not too much pressure on the available
territory, different tribes often coexist within a region. Even so, in broad terms, the tribes
mentioned here from the great majority of Europeans at the time when Greece and Rome
dominate the Mediterranean region.
The Mediterranean colonized: 8th - 3rd century BC
The Mediterranean is the chief arena of European development from the 8th century BC.
The focus at first is on the Aegean Sea. Here the civilization of Greece develops; from here
Greek colonists move west to Italy and Sicily. Settlements of Phoenicians and Carthaginians also
become established in the western Mediterranean. By the 3rd century Rome is firmly in control
of central and southern Italy. Greece, Carthage and Rome are all involved in the Sicilian
hostilities which in 264 provoke the first Punic War and which lead, eventually, to the dominance
of the Roman empire throughout the region.
Rome's private sea: 1st century BC - 6th century AD
The gap between the establishment of Rome's first province outside mainland Italy (Sicily in 241
BC) and Roman control of the entire Mediterranean is little more than two centuries. With the
annexation of Egypt in 30 BC, the Mediterranean becomes for the first time one political unit - a
large lake within a single empire.
This situation lasts for four centuries, until Germanic tribes move round the western
Mediterranean in the 5th century AD. This most historic of seas will continue to play a central
role in human history, but never again under unified control. Tribal pressure from the north has
been gradually building up throughout the heyday of Rome
Germans on the move: from the 2nd century BC
In the 2nd century BC, Germanic tribes move south and east from Scandinavia. The Goths and
the Vandals drive the Balts east along the coast of the Baltic. Other Germans press south along
the Rhine as far as the Danube, forcing the Helvetii - a Celtic tribe - to take refuge among the
Swiss mountains.

Two German tribes, the Teutones and the Cimbri, even strike so far south as to threaten Roman
armies in southern France and northern Italy. They are finally defeated and pressed back in 101
BC. But from the Roman point of view a long-term threat has been identified - that of the
German barbarians whose territory is now the region beyond the Rhine and the Danube.
The lull before the storm: 3rd century AD
By the 3rd century AD various German tribal confederations, all of whom will leave a lasting
mark on European history, are ranged along the natural borders of the Roman empire. They have
settled in the territories east of the Rhine and north of the Danube and Black Sea. From here, in
the great upheavals of the 4th and 5th century (known as the Vlkerwanderung, 'migration of the
peoples'), they will move throughout western Europe.
In the northwest, beyond the lower reaches of the Rhine, are the Franks. Further south, around
the Main valley, are the Burgundians. East of the Alps, near the Tisza river, are the Vandals.
Beyond them, occupying a far greater range of territory than the others, are the Goths.
New dispensations: 6th century AD
By the year 500 the map of Europe has settled into a new pattern. The centre of the Roman
empire is now unmistakably in the east, at Constantinople. The only parts of the empire to have
survived with any degree of continuity are southeast Europe (the Balkans and Greece) and
western Asia (on round the Mediterranean to Egypt). The rest is in new hands.
Italy, the old centre of gravity, is now ruled by Ostrogoths. The Visigoths are in Spain and
southwest France. The Burgundians are in southeast France and the Franks are in the north. In
Britain a struggle is beginning between the Celtic inhabitants and invading Angles and Saxons.
The change from the heyday of the Roman empire could hardly seem greater, yet time will reveal
strong hidden continuities. For a millennium, from 500 BC, there have been two influential
cultures in Europe - Greece in the east and Rome in the west. In a different guise, for another
1000 years, the same two influences prevail. For each has its own primacy in relation to
Christianity, the religion which now shapes Europe.
Constantinople is founded in AD 330 as the great Christian imperial city. But Rome, the earlier
imperial city, has its own different and prior claim - as the place where St Peter is believed to
have been martyred, and the seat of his successors as pope.
Constantinople never falters as the centre of eastern Christianity. Rome has its ups and downs,
but it gradually imposes on the barbarians its own idea of the Christian religion and, with it, the
authority of the pope. Latin and Greek were the political and cultural languages of the classical
centuries. Now they become the cult languages of the Christian era. The old European pattern,
disturbed though it is by the barbarian incursions, reasserts itself.
The most profound difference after the 5th century is that Germanic peoples from the north begin

to play a major role in western Europe, while new communities of Slavs establish themselves in
the east.
The Franks in western Europe: 6th - 10th century AD
The Franks are the first of the Germanic peoples to develop a large and stable kingdom in
northwest Europe. Clovis, pressing south from the modern region of Belgium, extends his rule in
the early 6th century to the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean.
Three hundred years later the Frankish empire of Charlemagne reaches east over the Rhine, up to
the Baltic in the north, as far as Austria in the east, and beyond the river Po in Italy. Europe has a
new Christian empire as extensive in the west as the original Roman example - but one which
will prove more short-lived.
The region united by Charlemagne includes, in modern terms, northeast Spain, France, Belgium,
the Netherlands, much of Germany, Switzerland, Austria and north Italy. In 840, on the death of
Charlemagne's son Louis the Pious, war breaks out between his three sons over their shares of
this inheritance.
A division between the brothers is finally agreed, in 843, in a treaty signed at Verdun. The
dividing lines drawn on this occasion prove of lasting and dark significance in the history of
Europe.
Three slices of Francia: AD 843
Two facts of European geography (the Atlantic coast and the Rhine) dictate a vertical division of
the Frankish empire, known in Latin as Francia. The three available sections are the west, the
middle and the east - Francia Occidentalis, Francia Media and Francia Orientalis.
It is clear that Francia Occidentalis will include much of modern France, and that Francia
Orientalis will approximate to the German-speaking areas east of the Rhine. Francia Media, an
ambiguous region between them, is the richest strip of territory. Allotted to Charlemagne's eldest
son, Lothair I, it stretches from the Netherlands and Belgium down both sides of the Rhine to
Switzerland and Italy.
This central Frankish kingdom is in subsequent centuries, including our own, one of the great
fault lines of Europe. The northern section becomes known as Lotharingia (the territory of
Lothair) and thus, in French, Lorraine; between it and Switzerland is Alsace.
As power grows or decreases to the west or the east, in the great regions emerging slowly as
France and Germany, these Rhineland provinces frequently change hands. So, for many
centuries, do the Low Countries, Burgundy and northern Italy.
The Slavs in eastern Europe: from the 6th century AD
The Slavs are first referred to by this name in AD 518 when they press into the Roman empire
across the Danube, though they have been settled for more than a millennium in the region to the

north (between the Vistula and Dnieper rivers).

After the collapse of the empire of the Huns, in the 5th century, the Slavs begin to expand their
territory. They move west into what are now the Czech republic and Slovakia and south towards
the Adriatic and Aegean - where their separate regional and religious development as Slovenes,
Croats, Serbs, Macedonians and Bulgarians later makes the peninsula of the Balkans one of the
most politically complex regions on the face of the earth.
Magyars: 9th - 10th century AD
The lower Danube, before the river enters the Black Sea, has been Europe's doorway to tribal
groups arriving from the north and east. Here the Visigoths and Ostrogoths and Slavs have first
presented themselves to the Roman empire, requesting or demanding admission. And here there
arrives, in AD 889, another group.
They differ from their predecessors in that they are not Indo-Europeans. They speak a FinnoUgric language. They call themselves Magyars, but their federation of tribes is known as OnOgur, meaning 'Ten Arrows'. The pronunciation of On-Ogur by their new Slav neighbours leads,
eventually, to the name by which the Magyars are later known - Hungarians.
The Magyars have been living for several centuries near the mouth of the Don, as vassals of the
Khazars. From 889 they spend a few years in the Balkans in the service of the Byzantine
emperor, but soon they move on to the northwest, through the Carpathian mountains.
Since 890 their leader has been Arpad, elected prince by the chieftains of the seven Magyar
tribes. His people number no more than 25,000, but together they subdue (within the space of a
few years) the scattered population of the region now known as Hungary. So Arpad becomes the
founder of a nation which somehow - in all the upheavals of central Europe - retains its identity
and its language down through the centuries.
Clashes in central Europe: 9th - 10th century AD
Central and eastern Europe, northwards from the Adriatic and the Aegean, is the arena in which
many conflicting forces confront each other in the 9th and 10th centuries.
Germans, pressing towards the east, meet onslaughts from Slavs and Magyars moving
westwards. Missionaries from Rome confront their rivals from Constantinople, competing for
pagan souls with their rival brands of Christianity. The rulers of new kingdoms, emerging in this
region at this period, decide which alliance and which religion to adopt. The frontiers established
in these conflicts remain sensitive throughout European history.
Roman Catholic kingdoms: 9th - 10th century AD
The earliest large kingdom in central Europe is Moravia, the realm of a Slav dynasty which by
the second half of the 9th century also controls Bohemia and adjacent parts of modern Poland
and Hungary.

The struggle between Roman and Byzantine Christianity crystallizes here. The district is first
evangelized by Roman missionaries from Bavaria, but the king of Moravia, resenting German
pressure, wants his people to receive the faith in their own Slavonic tongue. He sends to
Constantinople for missionaries, and receives (in 863) the brothers Cyril and Methodius. They
introduce a Slavonic liturgy. It is later outlawed by German clerics, who in association with
Rome impose the Latin rite on the region.
In neighbouring Hungary there are similar swings of faith, though here the Magyar royal family
takes the opposite line. The Magyars, established in Hungary from about 896, overwhelm the
Moravian kingdom soon after 900 and become a major threat to the Germans until defeated near
the Lech river in 955.
By that time many of their chieftains are Greek Orthodox Christians. But the Hungarian king
(Gez, a great-grandson of Arpad) prefers to look westwards. In 975 he and his family are
baptized in the Roman Catholic faith, initiating a lasting link between Hungary and Rome.
An even closer link with Rome is forged by Mieszko, the founder of the Polish kingdom.
Deciding that his best hope of security lies in a western alliance, he adopts Roman Catholic
Christianity in 966 and makes subtle use of the feudal system to win himself powerful protection.
He accepts the German emperor Otto I as his feudal lord, and shortly before his death goes one
step better - placing Poland directly under the authority of the pope in Rome.
A much disputed border between Roman and Greek influence falls within the region known for
much of the 20th century as Yugoslavia. Croatia, in the west, is Roman Catholic. Christian from
the 7th century, it is an established duchy by 880; in 925 a Croatian ruler receives his crown
directly from the pope. By contrast the ruler of Serbia, in the east, adopts the Greek Orthodox
faith. In about 880 he invites disciples of Cyril and Methodius to educate his people.
This ancient division between two closely linked groups of Slavs is evident in their writing.
Their shared language (called in recent times Serbo-Croatian) is written in the Roman script by
the Croatians and in Cyrillic by the Serbians.
Greek Orthodox kingdoms: 9th - 10th century AD
The two great Slav kingdoms within the Greek Orthodox fold are Bulgaria and Russia. The
rulers of both, according to tradition, weigh up the attractions of Rome and Constantinople. They
choose the glories of the east.
The Bulgarian decision appears to be primarily political. The ruler, Boris I, is baptized in the
Greek Orthodox church in 865, but for the next five years he plays Rome and Constantinople off
against each other. In 870, when it is plain that Rome will not accept an independent Bulgarian
patriarch, he brings his mainly pagan nation within the Byzantine fold (which allows greater
independence to provincial churches).

The decision of the Russian ruler to embrace Greek Orthodoxy is presented in the traditional
account as aesthetic rather than political. In about 988 the prince of Kiev, Vladimir, commissions
a report which persuades him of the attractions of Byzantine Christianity.
It is a decision of profound importance for Orthodox Christianity, which in Russia finds its third
great empire. Constantinople, the Christian seat of the Roman empire, becomes thought of as the
second Rome. After its fall to the Turks, in 1453, Moscow is in place to take on the sacred mantle
- describing itself proudly as the third Rome.
Northwest Europe: 9th - 12th century AD
During the 9th and 10th century Scandinavia sends out the last great marauding group of
Europeans, the Vikings. But the same period also sees the first settled kingdoms in the region.
By 811 Denmark has a king powerful enough to make a treaty with the Franks, and in the
following century a Danish king, Harald Bluetooth, becomes the first Scandinavian ruler to
convert to Christianity. He is baptized in about 960. A few years later a Norwegian king, Olaf I,
takes the same step - between 995 and 999. Iceland becomes Christian in about 1000.
Denmark and Norway, linked in the 11th century in the empire of Canute, are by this time
unshakably Christian kingdoms. But in the forests of Sweden the twin processes - unification and
the defeat of paganism - begin later and take longer.
The first ruler of any part of Sweden to be baptized is Olaf, king of Gtaland in the south, in
about 1010. He and his successors struggle for more than a century against pagan rulers, whose
most famous and jealously defended shrine is at Uppsala. Not until Uppsala is established as an
archbishopric, in 1164, can Sweden be securely classified as Christian.
Feudal Europe: 10th - 15th century
Although feudalism develops as early as the 8th century, under the Carolingian dynasty, it does
not prevail widely in Europe until the 10th century - by which time virtually the entire continent
is Christian.
For the next 500 years, great accumulations of power and landed wealth pass between a few
favoured players as if in a vast board game. The rules are complex, and to an outside eye deeply
mysterious. But certain actions and qualifications bring a distinct advantage.
The top players in feudal Europe come from a small group of people - an aristocracy, based on
skill in battle, with a shared commitment to a form of Christianity (at once power-hungry and
idealistic) in which the pope in Rome has special powers as God's representative on earth. As a
great feudal lord with moral pretensions, holding the ring between secular sovereigns, the pope
can be seen as Europe's headmaster.
Bishops and abbots are part of the small feudal aristocracy, for they are mostly recruited from the

noble families holding the great fiefs. Indeed bishops can often be found on the battlefield,
fighting it out with with the best.
As in any other context, the strongest argument in feudalism - transcending the niceties of loyalty
- is naked force. The Normans in England or in Sicily rule by right of conquest, and feudal
disputes are regularly resolved in battle.
But feudalism also provides many varieties of justification for force. And the possession of a
good justification is almost as reassuring to a knight as a good suit of armour.
One excellent excuse for warfare is the approval of the church. In 1059 the pope virtually
commands the Normans to attack Sicily, by giving them feudal rights over territory not as yet
theirs. Similarly Rome lets it be known that the Holy See is on the side of William when he
invades England in 1066.
Another important form of justification is a dynastic claim to a territory. Generations of
marriages, carefully arranged for material gain, result in an immensely complex web of
relationships - reflected often in kingdoms of very surprising shape on the map of Europe.
A simple example is the vast swathe of land ruled over in the 12th century by Henry II.
Stretching from Northumberland to the south of France, it has been brought together by a process
of inheritance and dynastic marriage.
More complex, but equally typical of Christian feudalism, is the case of Sicily. In the 11th
century the Normans seize it by invitation of the pope. In the 12th century the island is joined to
distant Germany because the German king marries a Sicilian princess. And in the 13th century it
is linked with France because the pope, intervening again, is now opposed to the Germans.
European prosperity: 12th - 14th century
The period differs profoundly from the previous five centuries in that it is no longer the people of
Europe who are on the move. Since the declining years of the Roman empire, the Germanic
tribes of the north have been jostling for space. Now they are settled. It is their leaders who are
still restless for power, wealth and glory - within Europe but also to the east, where successive
popes send them on crusades.
This change brings two contrasting results - a volatile scene of politics and warfare, with an
underlying increase in stablity.
The shifting pattern of feudal alliances in medieval Europe is a process of surface adjustment.
Corrections are made in long spasmodic conflicts, such as the Hundred Years War. Occasional
victories between small numbers of heavily armed men redraw the map for succeeding
generations.
Meanwhile the people of Europe are busy with matters of more basic importance - agriculture,
crafts, trade and the development of commerce in towns of increasing wealth. Beneath the
savage glitter of feudal Europe lies the steady growth of a continent capable once again of

mighty achievements - evident, for example, in the spectacular Christian architecture of the
period.
Intruders from the east: 13th - 14th century AD
The Russian steppes have long been vulnerable to invading groups of nomads, such as the
Kipchak Turks. But from the 13th century Europe suffers much more violent incursions from the
east.
In the long run the most successful intruders will be the Ottoman Turks, who first move into
Europe through Gallipoli in 1354. But an earlier and more devastating destruction comes in the
previous century with the arrival of the Mongols. They enter Russia in 1236. They sack Moscow
in 1238 and Kiev in 1240. In 1241 they move further west and south.
One army from the Mongol horde advances into Poland in 1241. They defeat a joint force of
German and Polish knights at Legnica in April. In the same month another Mongol army wins a
crushing victory over the Hungarians at Mohi. The tribesmen spend that summer on the plains of
Hungary, grasslands similar to their own steppes. Eastern Europe is ill-equipped to dislodge
these fierce nomads. But a faraway event resolves the issue.
News comes in December that the great khan, Ogedai, has died in Karakorum. The leader of the
horde, Batu, and other Mongol nobles must attend the quriltai which will elect his successor.
Batu withdraws from Hungary, returning the horde to its grasslands around the Volga.
Ups and downs in the economy: 12th - 14th century AD
Throughout Europe the period from about 1150 to 1300 sees a steady increase in prosperity,
linked with a rise in population. There are several reasons. More land is brought into cultivation a process in which the Cistercians play an important part. Rich monasteries, controlled by
powerful abbots, become a significant feature of feudal Europe.
In tandem with the improvement in rural wealth is the development of cities thriving on trade, in
luxury goods as well as staple products such as wool.
Prominent among the trading centres of the 13th century are the coastal Italian cities, whose
merchants ply the Mediterranean; Venice is particularly prosperous after the opportunities
presented by the fourth crusade. In a similar way the cities of the Netherlands are well placed to
profit from commerce between their three larger neighbours - England, France and the German
states. And the Hanseatic towns handle the trade from the Baltic.
Together with this increase in trade goes the development of banking. Christian families,
particularly in the towns of northern Italy, begin to amass fortunes by offering the financial
services which have previously been the preserve of the Jews.
In the 14th century this economic prosperity falters. Land goes out of cultivation, the volume of
trade drops. There are various possible reasons. There is an unusual run of disastrously bad
harvests in many areas in the early part of the century. And social structures are painfully

adjusting, as the old feudal system of obligations crumbles.

The final straw is the Black Death, which not only kills a third of Europe's population in 1348-9;
it also ushers in an era when plague is a recurrent hazard. The 14th century is not the best in
which to live. But in the 15th century - the time of the Renaissance in Europe, and the age of
exploration - economic conditions improve again.
The economic troubles of the 14th century are reflected in disorder and unrest throughout much
of Europe. This is true both at a grassroots level, in a series of peasants' revolts, and among great
institutions of state. The papacy is unsettled, in exile in Avignon. France and England are
engaged in the futile rivalry of the Hundred Years' War. The condottieri wreak havoc in Italy.
Bohemia is an exception, enjoying a period of stability under Charles IV. But the most significant
political development, from the later part of the 14th century, is the accumulation of territory in
the hands of the dukes of Burgundy.
The duchy of Burgundy: AD 1369-1491
Ever since the creation of Francia Media, Burgundy has been an important realm at the heart of
western Europe - sometimes within the German empire, sometimes linked to the French
kingdom, sometimes split between the two.
From the late 10th century the western part of Burgundy, lying to the west of the Sane river, is
held as a dukedom by a junior line of the French royal family - first the Capetians and then, from
1363, the Valois.
Burgundy's rise to the status of a major European power begins in 1369 when the first Valois
duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, marries Margaret, heiress to the county of Flanders.
The couple come into their Flemish inheritance in 1384. They and their descendants steadily
increase their territories, aiming particularly to bridge the gap between Burgundy and the
Netherlands with acquisitions such as Luxembourg (in 1443).
By 1470 their great-grandson Charles the Bold rules a vast territory stretching from Burgundy
and Franche-Comt in the south through Alsace up to Friesland in the extreme north and then
down the Atlantic coast as far as Calais.
In name Charles rules only a duchy. In reality he has an empire. But he has no son. The heir to
these vast possessions is a daughter, Mary. As Europe's greatest marital prize she falls to a
family, the Habsburgs, whose specialization is advantageous marriages. The Habsburgs bring
dignity rather than territory. The head of their house, Frederick III, is the Holy Roman emperor.
From 1473 secret negotiations are undertaken between the Holy Roman emperor and Charles the
Bold. The proposed bargain is that Frederick III will raise Burgundy from the status of a duchy to
that of a kingdom, in return for which Charles's daughter Mary will marry Frederick's son
Maximilian.
When Charles dies in battle in January 1477, neither plan has come to fruition. But it suits

Burgundy to clinch this imperial alliance as security against its neighbour, France. The marriage
plans are hurried through. Maximilian weds Mary by proxy in March and in person in August.
The French king, Louis XI, makes strenuous efforts to recover the part of the Burgundian
inheritance which has been most closely linked to the French crown - the duchy of Burgundy to
the west of the river Sane. He also covets the Franche-Comt ('free county' of Burgundy) to the
east of the river, historically linked to the German empire but recently French.
The betrothal of his son to a Habsburg princess promises to secure both these territories for
Louis. But in 1491 a different marriage is arranged for his son - bringing another prize, that of
Britanny. The result is that only the duchy of Burgundy is merged with France, leaving
everything east of the Sane to the Habsburgs.