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Charles Martel (13 April 1327 – 21 April 1327), was the third child and first son of Charles, Duke of Calabria, heir of Robert, King of Naples and Yolande of Aragon and his wife Marie of Valois, a niece of King Philip IV le bel of France.
Charles Martel (13 de abril de 1327-21 de abril de 1327), fue el tercer hijo y primer hijo de Carlos, duque de Calabria, heredero de Roberto, rey de Nápoles y Yolande de Aragón y su esposa María de Valois, sobrina del rey Felipe IV le bel de Francia.
- Overview
- Early life
- Mayor of the palace
- Consolidation of power and the Battle of Tours
Charles Martel (born c. 688—died October 22, 741, Quierzy-sur-Oise [France]) mayor of the palace of Austrasia (the eastern part of the Frankish kingdom) from 715 to 741. He reunited and ruled the entire Frankish realm and defeated a sizable Muslim raiding party at Poitiers in 732. His byname, Martel, means “the hammer.”
Charles was the illegitimate son of Pippin II of Herstal, the mayor of the palace of Austrasia. By this period the Merovingian kings of the Frankish realm were rulers in name only. The burden of rule lay upon the mayors of the palace, who governed Austrasia, the eastern part of the Frankish kingdom, and Neustria, its western portion. Neustria bitterly resented its conquest and annexation in 687 by Pippin, who, acting in the name of the king, had reorganized and reunified the Frankish realm.
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The assassination of Pippin’s only surviving legitimate son in 714 was followed a few months later by the death of Pippin himself. Pippin left as heirs three grandsons, and, until they came of age, Plectrude, Pippin’s widow, was to hold power. As an illegitimate son, Charles Martel was entirely neglected in the will. But he was young, strong, and determined, and an intense struggle for power at once broke out in the Frankish kingdom.
Both Charles and Plectrude faced rebellion throughout the Frankish kingdom when Pippin’s will was made known. The king, Chilperic II, was in the power of Ragenfrid, mayor of the palace of Neustria, who joined forces with the Frisians in Holland in order to eliminate Charles. Plectrude imprisoned Charles and tried to govern in the name of her grandchildren, but Charles escaped, gathered an army, and defeated the Neustrians in battles at Amblève near Liège (716) and at Vincy near Cambrai (717). His success made resistance by Plectrude and the Austrasians useless, and they submitted. In 719 Charles defeated Ragenfrid at Soissons and forced him to retreat to Angers. From that point, Charles alone governed the Franks as mayor.
Assured of Austrasia, Charles now attacked Neustria itself, finally subduing it in 724. This freed Charles to deal with hostile elements elsewhere. He attacked Aquitaine, whose ruler, Eudes (Odo), had been an ally of Ragenfrid, but Charles did not gain effective control of southern France until late in his reign. He also conducted long campaigns, some as late as the 730s, against the Frisians, Saxons, and Bavarians, whose brigandage endangered the eastern frontiers of his kingdom. Even after these expeditions, the Saxons in particular continued to raid Charles’s territory whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Charles relied heavily on armed freemen to serve as the foundation of his military, but the increasing pace of offensive operations compelled him to create for his army a strong cavalry element composed of landed professional fighting men. The stirrup was not yet in use among Frankish horsemen, so Charles’s equestrian force would not have resembled the true heavy shock cavalry of the later Middle Ages, but the expense of arms and armour was nevertheless significant. To finance this costly enterprise, he appropriated some of the ecclesiastical lands recently acquired and consolidated by various bishops, mostly in Burgundy. This action aroused no contemporary censure, and the tenure of the lands was later regularized under Charles’s sons Pippin and Carloman. It was then decided that the warriors to whom the lands had been granted should hold them for life (precaria), with the church remaining the actual owner.
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Again, no contemporary disapproval was shown at Charles’s severity toward bishops, such as Rigobert of Reims, who were resentful or tardy in surrendering their holdings. Charles, in fact, was viewed favourably by the church and was noted for his patronage of monasteries. It was to Charles that Pope Gregory II wrote in 722 to enlist support for Boniface’s mission in the Rhineland. From that point onward, Charles consistently supported Boniface and also assisted the missionary efforts of Pirmin and Willibrord, apostles of the Alemanni and of the Frisians, respectively.
Having spent a large part of the 720s campaigning in the north and east, Charles spent much of the following decade combating a persistent threat on his southern frontier. Ever since their arrival in Spain from Africa in 711, Muslims had raided Frankish territory, threatening Gaul and on one occasion (725) reaching Burgundy and sacking Autun. In 732 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ghafiqi, the governor of Córdoba, marched into Bordeaux and defeated Eudes. The Muslims then proceeded north across Aquitaine to the city of Poitiers. Eudes appealed to Charles for assistance, and Charles managed to defeat a significant Muslim force at the Battle of Tours. Although Tours is sometimes presented as a decisive check on Muslim expansion into Europe, it was, in reality, a single engagement in a decades-long conflict between the Franks and the armies of Muslim Spain. The victory did have the effect of burnishing Charles’s reputation and authority, especially in Aquitaine, where he forced Eudes to swear allegiance to him.
In 733 Charles began his campaigns to force Burgundy to yield to his rule. In 735 word arrived that Eudes was dead, and Charles marched rapidly across the Loire River in order to make his power felt around Bordeaux. By 739 he had completely subdued the petty chieftains of Burgundy, and he continued to fend off Muslim advances into Gaul during the decade.
- Eleanor Shipley Duckett
Charles, Duke of Calabria (1298 – 9 November 1328), was the Duke of Calabria from 1309 until his death. Upon his father's elevation as King of Naples, he was made vicar-general of Naples and duke of Calabria He was elected as signore by the city of Florence in 1326. Charles died on 9 November 1328 in Naples.
Charles Martel (c. 688 – 22 October 741), Martel being a sobriquet in Old French for "The Hammer", was a Frankish political and military leader who, as Duke and Prince of the Franks and Mayor of the Palace, was the de facto ruler of the Franks from 718 until his death.
25 de abr. de 2023 · On 22 October 741, Charles Martel, a prominent Frankish leader, passed away. Widely regarded by historians as a key figure in shaping modern Europe, Charles Martel was renowned for his prowess as a warrior and statesman, earning him the nickname “the hammer.”
Charles Martel , Latin Carolus Martellus (“Charles the Hammer”), (born c. 688—died Oct. 22, 741, Quierzy-sur-Oise, Fr.), Carolingian mayor of the palace (715–41). He was a child born out of wedlock to Pippin of Herstal, mayor of the palace and virtual ruler of the Frankish realm in the waning days of the Merovingian dynasty.
