Daily Archives: July 31, 2024

Top Tens – History (Rome): Top 10 Roman Empires (Special Mention) (3) Holy Roman Empire

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Map of the Carolingian in 814 AD – Wikipedia “Holy Roman Empire” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

 

(3) HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE (800 / 962-1806)

 

It may be most remembered today by Voltaire’s famous quip – neither holy nor Roman nor an empire – but it remains the most enduring and significant claimant to the continuation or succession of the western Roman empire, hence ranking in my top tier of special mentions.

Of course, that claim does feel somewhat like Pope Leo III pulling a fast one on the eastern Roman Empire, opportunistically using a woman on the eastern imperial throne – the horror! – to effectively claim Empress Irene as a nullity and crown Charlemagne as Roman emperor, in Rome no less, over three centuries after the last western Roman emperor. Charlemagne’s realm henceforth was styled simply as the Roman Empire – the holy part of its title came a few centuries later or so.

In fairness, the claim to Roman emperor or empire had some force to it under Charlemagne. After all, he had achieved the largest unified polity in western Europe since the Roman Empire, including a substantial part of the former territory of the western Roman empire, effectively including Rome itself – although his father Pepin had donated that to the papacy in what would become the Papal States. Possession of one of the two Romes – the original first Rome or the ‘second Rome’ of Constantinople – is my foremost criteria for ranking special mentions above my wild tier of claimants to succession from the Roman Empire.

Historians tend to identify the empire of Charlemagne as the Frankish or Carolingian Empire, as distinct from the Holy Roman Empire proper. Charlemagne’s empire was divided between his sons. From that division, Germany emerged as a separate realm from the Frankish Empire, largely originating from the eastern Frankish empire, and it was from Germany that the Holy Roman Empire truly arose, with Otto I as the first Holy Roman Emperor in 962, even if that cuts down the so-called thousand year Reich (from Charlemagne’s coronation in 800) to a mere 844 years.

Again, the claim to Roman empire had some force to it under Otto and his successors, even if it oscillated between that idea as reflected in its title as Roman Empire and the reality as reflected in its title as Empire or Kingdom of the Germans. The actual term Holy Roman Empire began to be used only during the reign of Friedrich or Frederick Barbarossa two centuries and two dynasties later, under whom the claim also had some teeth to it (as well as transforming him into a legendary figure) and continued to do so until his grandson Friedrich II, who attempted to run an Italian-German empire from Sicily.

From there however the empire and its claim to succession from Rome devolved into the sorry state reflected by Voltaire’s quip – or that of Marx, that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce – until Napoleon Bonaparte did away with the whole dog’s breakfast of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. Hence 1806 is occasionally proposed as a date for the fall of the Roman Empire, albeit often with tongue in cheek.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (Special Mention) (12) Arab Conquests

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Go Greek fire you’re burning up the quarter mile
(Greek fire, go Greek fire)
Go Greek fire you’re coasting through the heat lap trials
(Greek fire, go Greek fire)
You are supreme, the chicks’ll cream for Greek fire – Greek fire in Byzantine manuscript

 

(12) ARAB CONQUESTS (622 – 751 AD)

 

The Arab conquests were a nigh-unstoppable historical explosion, once previously divided tribes in a historical backwater had been united under Mohammed – conquering one of history’s largest pre-modern empires (indeed the seventh or eighth largest in all history) on three continents in a little over a century, a blitzkrieg by horse, sail…and camel!

 “In speed and extent, the first Arab conquests were matched only by those of Alexander the Great, and they were more lasting.”

Mohammed had essentially conquered the Arabian peninsula, but his death left his successors – the three great Arab caliphates – only at the start of extending his empire to even wider conquests.

The Rashidun Caliphate, immediate successors to Mohammed, did most of the heavy lifting to break out of the Arabian peninsula. Two formidable empires blocked their path, the Persian Empire and the eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire, but the Arabs conquered the former and routed the latter back to Anatolia.

However, it was under their successors, the Umayyad Caliphate, that Arab conquests reached their greatest extent, westwards from the north African shore to Europe itself – conquering Spain (well, not quite all, in a manner similar to the famous caveat to the Roman conquest of Gaul in Asterix comics) and famously invading France before being turned back at Tours by Charles Martel.

Eastwards, the Umayyads also extended beyond Persia through central Asia to the fringes of India and China – the latter of which presented even the Tang Empire some difficulty resisting their advance.

The Umayyads were overthrown by the Abbasids in 750 AD and the Abbasids then formed the third great Arab caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, who then presided over what is often regarded as the Golden Age of Islam from their capital in Baghdad. The surviving Umayyad dynasty fled into exile across the Mediterranean to Spain, continuing their Caliphate as the Emirate of Cordoba independent from the Abbasids, even with their own rival golden age of Islam in the fabled Al-Andalus of Spain.

Although the Abbasids made some more territorial gains – notably Sicily and Crete – their Caliphate saw an end to the rapid Arab conquests, albeit with victory against Tang China in the Battle of Talas in 751 AD as a postscript:

“Muslim armies had come against a combination of natural barriers and powerful states that impeded any further military progress. The wars produced diminishing returns … The priorities of the rulers also shifted from conquest of new lands to administration of the acquired empire … the period of rapid centralized expansion would now give way to an era when further spread of Islam would be slow and accomplished through the efforts of local dynasties, missionaries, and traders.”

One is spoilt for choice for wars in the century and more of Arab conquests, but if one were to choose the wars that best encapsulate them as a whole, it would be the Arab-Byzantine wars from 629 AD to 718 AD.

The Byzantine or eastern Roman empire was the first state of substance that the Arabs faced when breaking out from their peninsula. It seemed incredible that the Arabs could defeat such a firmly established state, even when that state was weakened from recent war with Persia, yet they did – routing it back to Anatolia as they conquered its other territory in Asia and Africa, which then became their springboard for further conquests.

Ironically, it then seemed incredible that the Byzantines could hold the line or withstand complete defeat or conquest by the Arabs as the latter went from one victory to another – yet they did, from Arab attacks by land and by sea, even as the Arabs besieged Constantinople twice, in 674-678 AD and in 717-718 AD. Among other things, the Byzantine superweapon Greek fire was instrumental in their success.

The frontiers of Arab conquest finally stabilized between them in Anatolia, as it did elsewhere under the Abbasid caliphate at about this time, until from about 863 AD when the Byzantines – incredibly again – were able to regain both the initiative and some of their former territory, in wars usually reversed in name to the Byzantine-Arab wars to signify Byzantine ascendance.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)