History

Who would rule Italy?

Posted on Author Antoine P Borg

In 1024, Italy tired of German rule and wondered if French nobility would like to be the King of Italy. Would this have been good for France, or would it have been a bad idea?

Carolingian Europe

Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne was an important historical figure because he united most of Europe under his rule. This is more than Rome had ever controlled. Carolingian Europe was at the peak of civilisation for the Middle Ages.

He passed his legacy to his son and heir, Louis the Pious1. Louis tried to lay out rules to show his sons how to reign, but then botched this when he tried to favour children from his second marriage instead1. His children quarrelled and this became the Wars of Carolingian succession1.

The wars were ferocious and culminated at the Battle of Fontenoy2. This was such a monumental battle that historians estimate as much as 1% of all the population in Europe was on that battlefield on 25 June 8412. The result of the battle is a three-way split of Europe into2:

Carolingian Europe, including northern Italy
The three-way split of the Carolingian Empire by Furfur
This includes elements taken or adapted from Fond de carte Tour de France-blank (by Sémhur), CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
  • West Francia, which maps to a large chunk of modern France.
  • Middle Francia, meaning modern day Netherlands, Alsace, Lorraine, Burgundy, Provence and northern Italy.
  • East Francia, meaning anything East of the Rhine and north-east of Italy. This formed the basis of the Holy Roman Empire.

You can read the detail of the Battle of Fontenoy here.

Whomever ruled East Francia was also the Holy Roman Emperor.

Holy Roman Emperors, and Italy

Within a hundred years, the Saxon Ottonian dynasty ruled East Francia3. By 1032, they conquered the Kingdom of Italy and the Kingdom of Burgundy. This meant that the Holy Roman Emperor was now also the King of Italy.

The Battle of Fontenoy as imagined in the 14th century and included in Les Grandes Chroniques de France;
Public Domain, Link

Tradition had it that the King was elected from amongst German nobility. In 1024, the newly elected King of Germany was King Conrad II4. The Italian nobility weren’t happy with this, and wanted the Kingdom of Italy to secede from German influence, and therefore from the Holy Roman Empire4.

This wasn’t unreasonable. Conrad’s predecessors had neglected the Italian peninsula, especially the city of Rome4. The nobility faced unrest and wanted to change this tradition4.

The question was – who should be King, if not Conrad?

The ruler of Italy

Italian nobility first approached King Robert II of France who rejected the offer4. They then approached Duke William V of Aquitaine4.

Duke William V is my 25 x great-grandfather.

A picture of King Conrad II, of the Holy Roman Empire, and of Italy.
King Conrad II by an unknown author – Public Domain

The offer excited William4, because it would extend his rule from the Atlantic to the Ionian sea. He travelled to Italy in 1025 to examine the situation there5. By nature, William did not have a forceful personality and he hadn’t been successful in battle6. He proposed his son for the crown5, provided there was unanimous backing for him5.

It is clear that his conservative side took over his reasoning here. He was not willing to antagonise anyone, hence his insistence on making sure no one opposed his son.

Unanimity was not obvious, especially with all the various vested interested. When William saw the political mess on the peninsula, he refused the crown, returning to his Duchy instead6.

What if?

European history would have been different had William’s son become King of Italy. It’s difficult to predict how things would have changed, especially since we’re talking about events from 1 000 years ago. Here’s a few predictions I have based on what I know:

A map showing the duchy of Aquitaine in modern-day France by Reigen
  1. The troubles in the Italian peninsula continued and this led to the formation of the many city states, and the Papal states. The House of Aquitaine could have been a calming, uniting force which would have shaped Italy’s influence in European history.
  2. William VIII – another of William V’s sons – started the first crusade against Islam under the Pope’s urging. It’s likely this son would have had other responsibilities in Italy. Had that 1st crusade not taken place, the sequence of holy wars between Christianity and Islam may never have happened, or at the least, delayed.
  3. William V’s great-grandson was Raymond of Poitiers who ended up in the Middle East. His descendants ruled over sections of the region, and then Cyprus. This too would have been different if the family was more focused on Italy.

I could go on. The further away from William V we get, the harder it is to tell what could have happened. It’s also possible that neither of these changes would have happened anyway.

But it is fun to hypothesise, isn’t it?

  1. Louis the Pious; House of Darmenia; 2020-05-16[↩][↩][↩]
  2. The Battle of Fontenoy; House of Darmenia; 2019-12-16[↩][↩][↩]
  3. Christianity; Encyclopaedia Brittanica; 2020-11-26[↩]
  4. Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II – 1027-1039; Holy Roman Empire Association; (Retrieved 2022-01-07) [↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩][↩]
  5. Conrad II, 990-1039: Emperor of Three Kingdoms; Hervig Wolfram; Penn State Press; 2010-11-01[↩][↩][↩]
  6. William V; House of Darmenia; 2018-04-24[↩][↩]