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How Did Charlemagne Develop His Empire

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Throughout the reign of Charlemagne, he imposed many crucial developments which were key to the success of his empire. First off, up until this point in history so far, high positions in government tended to be given to people who came from wealthy and noble families. This meant that these people holding high positions felt as if they were entitled to their positions, often felt they were in a higher social class from the common person, and thought they did not have to agree with the absolute ruler on everything since they are a noble in their own right. When Charlemagne inherited the throne, he set up a new system where high ranking officials, called counts, were selected by him and only him, and could include even the lowest peasant in …show more content…

When the Carolingian Empire collapsed shortly after Louis the Pious’ death, it was divided amongst his three sons, who swiftly declared war on one another . To complicate things more, these smaller states started fighting internally, which caused the newly formed states to break apart into even smaller states. This pretty much left Europe in turmoil and back into the Dark Ages. Then, the Vikings and the Magyars, two strong forces started conquering these weakened sub-factions without much of a fight. The Vikings were especially ruthless, killing everyone they came in contact with, burning villages, and leaving them ransacked. As a result of the Vikings brutality, many commoners fled their towns and ventured off into the countryside to escape them. As a result, most of them ended up back under control of nobles from the Carolingian Empire since those nobles were under control of the land. This changed the society and government because now these commoners or peasants were back under absolute control by the nobles. Also, they were forced into labor to produce agricultural goods, in return the nobles hired knights to protect the people living in their land, and in return these people had to pay these knights for protecting …show more content…

It is critical to point out that the main reason why commoners were so afraid of the Vikings was because they are an especially brutal group of people. They were not interested in taking over villages and enforcing their own rules, instead they would ransack the village, horrifically kill everyone, and leave the place in ruins. When the commoners would flee to the countryside, they would end up running into the land which was left over to the nobles from the Carolingian Empire. These commoners would then end up under control by the nobles, and in exchange the nobles offered protection from the Vikings. This practice was referred to as was feudalism. Manorialism refers to the economic system which was in place under the nobles. The peasants, or serfs, would be bound to producing agricultural goods for the nobles kingdom. In return, the nobles would hire Vassals, or knights to protect the serfs, and in return the Vassals were given land which was farmed by some serfs to produce food and income for

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