Hugh Capet
Hugh Capet was the King of the Franks from 987 to 996. He is the founder of and first king from the House of Capet. The son of the powerful duke Hugh the Great and his wife Hedwige of Saxony, he was elected as the successor of the last Carolingian king, Louis V. Hugh was descended from Charlemagne's son Pepin of Italy through his paternal grandmother Béatrice of Vermandois, and was also a nephew of Otto the Great.
The dynasty he founded ruled France for nearly nine centuries: from 987 to 1328 in the senior line, and until 1848 via cadet branches.
Descent and inheritance
Hugh was the son of Hugh the Great, Duke of the Franks, and Hedwige of Saxony, daughter of the German king Henry the Fowler. His birth date is not given by any source, but modern scholars often date his birth to circa 941. The son of Hugues Le Grand, duke of Francia, Hugh Capet is traditionally considered the founder of the third dynasty of French Kings, the Capetians. He was born into a well-connected and powerful family with many ties to the royal houses of France and Germany.Through his mother, Hugh was the nephew of Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor; Henry I, Duke of Bavaria; Bruno the Great, Archbishop of Cologne; and finally, Gerberga of Saxony, Queen of France. Gerberga was the wife of Louis IV, King of France and mother of Lothair of France and Charles, Duke of Lower Lorraine.
His paternal family, the Robertians, were powerful landowners in the Île-de-France. His grandfather had been King Robert I. King Odo was his granduncle and Emma of France, the wife of King Rudolph, was his aunt. Hugh's paternal grandmother Beatrice of Vermandois was a patrilineal descendant of Charlemagne.
Rise of the Robertians
After the end of the ninth century, the descendants of Robert the Strong became indispensable in carrying out royal policies. As Carolingian power failed, the great nobles of West Francia began to assert that the monarchy was elective, not hereditary, and twice chose Robertians and Robert I as kings, instead of Carolingians.Robert I, Hugh the Great's father, was succeeded as King of the Franks by his son-in-law, Rudolph of Burgundy. When Rudolph died in 936, Hugh the Great had to decide whether he ought to claim the throne for himself. To claim the throne would require him to risk an election, which he would have to contest with the powerful Herbert II, Count of Vermandois, father of Hugh, Archbishop of Reims, and allied to Henry the Fowler, King of Germany; and with Hugh the Black, Duke of Burgundy, brother of the late king. To block his rivals, Hugh the Great brought Louis d'Outremer, the dispossessed son of Charles the Simple, from his exile at the court of Athelstan of England to become king as Louis IV.
This maneuver allowed Hugh to become the most powerful person in France in the first half of the tenth century. Once in power, Louis IV granted him the title of dux Francorum. Louis also officially declared Hugh "the second after us in all our kingdoms". Hugh also gained power when Herbert II of Vermandois died in 943, because Herbert's powerful principality was then divided among his four sons.
Hugh the Great came to dominate a wide swath of central France, from Orléans and Senlis to Auxerre and Sens, while the king was rather confined to the area northeast of Paris.
French monarchy in the 10th century
The realm in which Hugh grew up, and of which he would one day be king, bore little resemblance to modern France. Hugh's predecessors did not call themselves kings of France, and that title was not used by his successors until the time of his descendant Philip II. Kings ruled as rex Francorum, the title remaining in use until 1190 The lands they ruled comprised only a small part of the former Carolingian Empire. The eastern Frankish lands, the Holy Roman Empire, were ruled by the Ottonian dynasty, represented by Hugh's first cousin Otto II and then by Otto's son, Otto III. For a time loyalty to the Carolingians remained strong in the lands south of the river Loire after Charles the Simple was deposed in 922. Both the Duchy of Normandy and the Duchy of Burgundy were largely autonomous, and Brittany entirely soalthough from 956 Burgundy was ruled by Hugh's brothers Otto and Henry.France under Ottonian influence
In 956, when his father Hugh the Great died, Hugh, the eldest son, was then about fifteen years old and had two younger brothers. Otto I, King of Germany, intended to bring western Francia under his control, which was possible since he was the maternal uncle of Hugh Capet and Lothair of France, the new king of the Franks, who succeeded Louis IV in 954, at the age of 13.In 954, Otto I appointed his brother Bruno, Archbishop of Cologne and Duke of Lorraine, as guardian of Lothair and regent of the kingdom of France. In 956, Otto gave him the same role over Hugh and the Robertian principality. With these young princes under his control, Otto aimed to maintain the balance between Robertians, Carolingians, and Ottonians. In 960, Lothair agreed to grant to Hugh the legacy of his father, the margraviate of Neustria and the title of Duke of the Franks. But in return, Hugh had to accept the new independence gained by the counts of Neustria during Hugh's minority. Hugh's brother, Otto received only the duchy of Burgundy. Andrew W. Lewis has sought to show that Hugh the Great had prepared a succession policy to ensure his eldest son much of his legacy, as did all the great families of that time.
The West was dominated by Otto I, who had defeated the Magyars in 955, and in 962 assumed the restored imperial title. The new emperor increased his power over Western Francia with special attention to certain bishoprics on his border; although elected by Lothair, Adalberon, Archbishop of Reims, had imperial sympathies. Disappointed, King Lothair relied on other dioceses and on Arnulf I, Count of Flanders.
Hugh, Duke of the Franks
In 956, Hugh inherited his father's estates, in theory making him one of the most powerful nobles in the much-reduced kingdom of West Francia. As he was not yet an adult, his mother acted as his guardian, and young Hugh's neighbours took advantage. Theobald I of Blois, a former vassal of Hugh's father, took the counties of Chartres and Châteaudun. Farther south, on the border of the kingdom, Fulk II of Anjou, another former client of Hugh the Great, carved out a principality at Hugh's expense and that of the Bretons.The royal diplomas of the 960s show that the nobles were faithful not only to the Duke of the Franks, as in the days of Hugh the Great, but also to King Lothair. Indeed, some in the royal armies fought against the Duchy of Normandy on behalf of Lothair. Finally, even Hugh's position as second man in the kingdom seemed to slip. Two charters of the Montier-en-Der Abbey refer to Herbert III, Count of Vermandois, while Count of Chateau-Thierry, Vitry and lay abbot of Saint-Médard of Soissons, bearing the title of "Count of the Franks" and even "count of the palace" in a charter of Lothair.
For his part, Lothair also lost power with the ascendance of the Ottonian monarchy. It waned by participating in the gathering of relatives and vassals of Otto I in 965. However, from the death of the emperor in 973, Lothair wanted to revive the policy of his grandfather to recover Lorraine. Otto's son and successor, Otto II, appointed his cousin, Charles, brother of Lothair, as Duke of Lower Lorraine. This infuriated both Lothair and Hugh, whose sister, Beatrice was the regent for the young Duke Theodoric I of Upper Lorraine. In 978, Hugh thus supported Lothair in opening a war against Otto.
In August 978, accompanied by the nobles of the kingdom, Lothair surprised and plundered Aachen, residence of Otto II, forcing the imperial family to flee. After occupying Aachen for five days, Lothair returned to France after symbolically disgracing the city. In September 978, Otto II retaliated against Lothair by invading France with the aid of Charles. He met with little resistance on French territory, devastating the land around Rheims, Soissons, and Laon. Otto II then had Charles crowned as King of France by Theodoric I, Bishop of Metz. Lothair then fled to the French capital of Paris where he was besieged by Otto II and Charles. Sickness among his troops brought on by winter, and a French relief army under Hugh Capet, forced Otto II and Charles to lift the siege on 30 November and return to Germany. On the journey back to Germany, Otto's rearguard, unable to cross the Aisne in flood at Soissons, was completely wiped out, "and more died by that wave than by the sword." This victory allowed Hugh Capet to regain his position as the first noble of the Frankish kingdom.
Hugh aids Archbishop of Reims
Until the end of the tenth century, Reims was the most important of the archiepiscopal seats of France. Situated in Carolingian lands, the archbishop claimed the primacy of Gaul and the privilege to crown kings and direct their chancery. Therefore, the Archbishop of Reims traditionally had supported the ruling family and had long been central to the royal policy. But the episcopal city was headed by Adalberon of Rheims, nephew of Adalberon of Metz, elected by the King Lothair in 969, but who had family ties to the Ottonians. The Archbishop was assisted by one of the most advanced minds of his time, the schoolmaster and future Pope Sylvester II Gerbert of Aurillac. Adalberon and Gerbert worked for the restoration of a single dominant empire in Europe. King Lothair, 13 years old, was under the tutelage of his uncle Otto I. But upon reaching his majority, he became independent, which defeated their plans to bring the whole of Europe under a single crown. Therefore, they turned their support from Lothair to Hugh Capet.Indeed, for the Ottonian to make France a vassal state of the empire, it was imperative that the Frankish king was not of the Carolingian dynasty, and not powerful enough to break the Ottonian tutelage. Hugh Capet was for them the ideal candidate, especially since he actively supported monastic reform in the abbeys while other contenders continued to distribute church revenues to their own partisans. Such conduct could only appeal to Reims, who was very close to the Cluniac movement.