The Dark Ages (Documentary)

hello and welcome the fire of learning today we're going to be discussing the fall of the Roman Empire and the Dark Ages that subsequently engulfed Europe some questions we must address in this documentary are of course what caused the mighty Roman Empire to collapse what was life like in the Dark Ages how dark were they really and if they were rather dark what made them this way what did people hold on to throughout them and how did Europe eventually climb out of them this video today is made possible by the patreon support of Chris Yates so thank you again Chris now then let's get to it wrong 117 ad the year of the death of the Emperor Trajan who building on the efforts of his predecessors which at this time spend over 800 years expanded the Roman Empire to its pinnacle while there is still conflict on the borders which other strong emperors who succeed Trajan that same century such as Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius will pursue the empire itself is still in an age of prosperity and relative peace known as Pax Romana the Roman peace this is the glorious Roman Empire with which we are all familiar though it was still sad for centuries to come and while it was still in the middle of its Golden Age the seeds of catastrophe will soon be planted in 177 the son of Marcus Aurelius Commodus became Emperor Commodus broke the chain of strong Emperor's which Rome had been enjoying that century he was foolish cowardly inept and outright sociopathic and insane he ordered his guards to dance naked he drank in public while dressed like a woman he had hundreds of female and male sex slaves but what really angered the Roman elites known as patricians were things like human sacrifice mutilating innocent people and of course his participation in gladiator fights in these mock fights he would often take on amputees in very brutal way just as an example of how he would fight during this reign the Roman statesman casillas do would claim the Commodus cause to descend from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron and indeed many historians agree that Rome's very slow down fall begins with the rain of Commodus this went on for years until communist was finally killed by being strangled while bathing the Senate that pretended to love him while he was alive basically decided to make him a public enemy once he died and tried to wipe out his memory altogether Commodus was not the first lunatic Emperor the most famous example in Roman history was of course Caligula who did things like make his horse a priest and order his soldiers to stop the sea and collect seashells as war trophies when he declared war on the god Neptune these things are of course funny to us 2,000 years later but also very sad because these were quite clearly very mentally ill people who were placed in positions that allowed them to cause a lot of damage and they were to the Romans at the time very scary obviously with Caligula the Romans had whether these types of things before but there was not much relief following Commodus his death much more common than insane Emperor's in statesman in Rome were corrupt and self-serving ones though plenty of both kinds would come in his centuries which followed the year of the five Emperor's would follow his reign perta necks a military leader was made Emperor but the pataw rien garde but then the guard killed him within three months d-does Juliana's succeeded him by buying the position actually but then he was executed two months later civil war in Rome then broke out between two other claimants septimius severus and purse Kenya Schneider septa Mia's would win this war and rule for almost 18 years but following him was a succession of other corrupt and inept Emperor's and in fact corrupt and inept officials across the Empire in general so essentially while the role of Commodus and the year of the five emperors may have been in unusually desperate time for Rome it did set the stage for others similar behaviors to follow things did not improve in a third century as Rome entered what is remembered as a crisis of the third century during this period along with the aforementioned style of rule being come and play civil war ravaged and the vitae the empire foreign armies attacked it the economy took a major downfall there was a 13-year plague and many other troubles plagued Rome if people hadn't realized it before they definitely were now starting to realize that Rome was in trouble and indeed people were concerned that they were facing a complete collapse of the Empire if not the end of the world in 284 Diocletian became emperor diocletian was a low status soldier born in modern-day croatia that rose to the ranks of the military and eventually became emperor by defeating other claimants Diocletian was the first strong emperor roman seen in quite a while he recognized that rome was in major trouble and intended to reinvigorate the empire we've discussed already some of the things that were leading to and would eventually finally lead to Rome's collapse entirely foreign invasion civil war and other domestic struggles for power economic turmoil etc our remedy Diocletian would come to would be to split the empire between the East and the West Rome was a giant empire even by today's standards it stretched from Scotland to the Persian Gulf naturally if the empire turned his attention toward one end of it Scotland for example then this would give someone in Egypt an opportunity to seize control for themselves or cause some kind of chaos in an age when word traveled slowly and people and armies much lower Diocletian the suggested that the Empire remained one single Roman Empire but be divided administrative liebe tween east and west with two emperors furthermore Diocletian would break the 50 or so Roman provinces into over a hundred to ease administration of those as well these were generally successful reforms at least temporarily many other reforms such as expanding the army raising taxes to support that army trying to stop inflation and persecuting Christians were not effective and many were in fact rather harmful he had also tried to stop Civil War as the means by which new Emperor's came to power though after his reign this method once again became commonplace admirably the equation was the first Roman Emperor to voluntarily resign living out his retirement growing cabbages at his home until he died in 311 ad while splitting the Empire helped administratively financially it was a bad call the Western Empire was less wealthy but had more financial burdens namely supporting the military against numerous enemies and nearly constant warfare furthermore as expansion halted over the late 2nd and 3rd centuries the Western economy which relied heavily on slave labor from conquered peoples started to suffer more as well with fewer slaves obviously available the wealth of the Western Empire became increasingly concentrated in the elite meanwhile the lower classes struggled increasingly leading to a lost cohesion in society this along with other factors such as religious intolerance specifically toward Jews and much more so the rising religion Christianity and what many romans saw as a degradation of their values would lead to a breakdown of the Roman sense of community it would be an emperor named constantine the great that would attempt to solve many of these issues while fighting in yet another civil war for the throne in the early 4th century Constantine claimed to have received one of the most important messages in history in the sky he saw a cross a Christian symbol and heard the words in hoc Signo Linkous by this sign you shall conquer he then claimed to have a dream in which he was visited by Christ where he was commanded to fight with the Cairo sign another Christian symbol he did so and in the Battle of the Milvian bridge defeated his opponents army which outnumbered him 2 to 1 this would go down in history as one of the most important battles that were fought Constantine would enter Rome victoriously and would later issue the Edict of Milan along with the Eastern Emperor licinia's this essentially allowed the worship of Christianity and all other religions across the Empire thus ending centuries of persecution it also granted back to Christians all the lands which had been taken during diocletian's persecution later Constantine would defeat licinia's and war and become emperor of both the west and the east he was then found a new capital of the East who replaced in Greek pagan capital which symbolized the vision he would build the city on top of an older city called Byzantium and named it after himself Constantinople furthermore Constantine would help Christians organize the Catholic Church to its modern form contrary to popular belief Constantine did not immediately convert to Christianity in fact he spent most of his life officially as a pagan sort of bouncing around with and working on both religions and drawing symbols from both of them and that sort of thing but towards the end of his life he would convert to Christianity becoming the first Christian emperor of Rome thereby shocking much of the world it would not be long perhaps only 60 years or so after Constantine's death that most of Rome converted to Christianity as well in fact about 80% of the empire this was a huge change and the effects of Constantine's rule are still with us today was Christianity however beneficial to saving Rome or did it hasten its downfall there is debate some scholars argue that it led to a breakdown of traditional Roman values others argued that traditional Roman values were already breaking down and that Christianity gave Romans a new necessary focal point in their lives regardless however of the state religion Rome still had other problems to face throughout the 4th century the barbarians became a bigger and bigger problem this along with increasing financial difficulties more inept leadership after Constantine agreat a read a vision of the Empire and other problems started to spell trouble for Rome in the 4th century barbarians began encroaching on Roman territory and settling in parts of it and Rome often lacked the ability to remove them eventually Romans began integrating more and more barbarian soldiers into their armies to maintain their empire these soldiers were cheaper but had less loyalty as well typically they had no actual concern for Rome itself only for their barbarian commander and their people and of course only cared about their personal gain from being in the army in the late fourth and early fifth century a group known as the Huns from the Eurasian steppes began moving westward displacing many Germanic tribes these dramatic tribes primarily gasps enter and began pushing into Rome putting more strain on Rome as well the Goths were brought into the Roman Empire but were largely exploited and left to starve causing them to rebell in 376 this was when Rome started to face serious irreparable damage the Romans would eventually win this war but it would be a Pyrrhic victory as the Romans had lost a considerable amount including balance the Emperor of the East following this war would be two more civil wars which the Emperor Theodosius was struggled to win Theodosius died in 395 the last thriller of both the East and West Roman Empire his sons Han aureus and Arcadius would succeed him but they were essentially also inept rulers gaining the throne of a fractured Empire a Gothic leader Alaric would lead another rebellion when the sons of the Emperor Theodosius failed to give him much opportunity of advancement in the Roman army in which he was serving honora's failed to adequately respond to situation and was a general silico who was responsible for much of Rome's defense as in fact Alaric marched on the city of Rome itself still echo would defend Rome and other parts of the crumbling Empire but it would be excessively difficult he pulled troops out of Britain and urged his soldiers to bring those slaves to fight with them in 408 still a KO a threat to her norisse's power was executed thus died one of the last great Romans Alaric moved into Italy towards Rome his forces were starving and he needed food though the Romans had little themselves and 410 AD Alex sacked the city of Rome the great city had now fallen to barbarians many truly believed that the end of the world had come it is said that when the Emperor Honorius who was living in the city of Ravenna heard the news he cried out and yet it had just eaten from my hands he apparently thought that they meant his favorite chicken named aroma was what had perished Roma is as I'm sure you can tell the Latin word for Rome and when he learned it was a city instead he was relieved this just goes to show how out of touch with reality hun aureus really was and in fact many Roman Paul Editions and aristocrats were completely out of touch and it came at one of the worst possible times alaric and his Visigoths failing to find much food in Rome left for greener pastures throughout the next few decades of our Burien tribes began settling in Hispania Britannia Gaul North Africa and other parts of the Empire and the Romans were largely powerless to remove them and in fact negotiated ways to peacefully integrate them barbarian tribes again primarily Visigoths would ally themselves with Rome to repel Attila the Hun and his forces but when he was driven back and died unexpectedly in 453 conflict was back on ultimately the Barbarian forces in the Roman army known as the federally would unite under a leader of unknown ethnic background possibly a hun named Oda Walker and 476 Otto Acker would overthrow the last Roman Emperor ironically named Romulus that year on September 4th and proclaim himself king of Italy after over a thousand years Rome had now officially collapsed Romulus only 16 at the time was allowed to quietly retire as Rome's light was extinguished a key point to take from the fall of Rome was that it was not merely the result of barbarian invasion it was firstly a combination of several factors that weakened Rome significantly economically there were labor shortages from the lack of slave labor taxation increased heavily and the money was devalued from inflation for the more much of this tax money with the fund the military and infrastructure was ignored administrative ly the Empire definitely over expanded and the division between the West and East which temporarily helped ultimately would cause the two sides to grow apart leaving the Western Empire which was less wealthy and had more enemies weakened furthermore as if administration of the Empire wasn't hard enough it was being overseen by a number of corrupt and self-serving emperors and elites a large number of Roman emperors were assassinated by competitors others had to fight civil wars the throne and others having achieved it behaved selfishly and competently or sometimes rather like Caligula or Commodus there was a similar situation of ineptitude and apathy in the Senate as well and furthermore with the weakened government the wealthier class was able to flee to the countryside and avoid taxation and participation in the state we can even take into consideration the sons shift and religion which had an impact on the sudden shift in values beliefs and perspectives of the Roman people though as I said debate continues as to whether or not Christianity helped Rome or hastened its fall it was this society which the Barbarian tribes that would ultimately cause roms downfall found a rather important distinction however was that they did not all invade Rome in the traditional sense Rome faced many invasions which crippled it especially in later centuries but many other incidents viewed as invasions were really revolts the Gothic Wars of 376 for example was a revolt undertaken by the Goths who had been I don't want to say welcomed but legally brought into the Empire and allowed settle Alaric and Otto Acker weren't for invaders they were both Latin speaking members of the Roman army but they and the soldiers were barbarian and Origen and had no real connection to the Empire beyond the superficial opportunity that they saw as migrants while fleeing from the Huns and thus with the fall of the Roman Empire Europe and while the Western world in general really falls into what historians call the early Middle Ages or the Dark Ages but while the Dark Ages are painted as a regressive unstable anarchic fearful primitive time the story of this age is very complicated society did regress in many ways for many people living in the times the world was comparatively darker than it had been in the past for reasons which we will discuss but there was also a lot going on on this time there were many important and great moments in history which took place in an age which historians may unfairly scorn sometimes in the decades following the fall of Rome a number of things happen multiple success with kingdoms arise in the old territories of the Empire this is a map of Europe in a year 524 years after well as you can see the kingdoms formed by the Visigoths the Franks the Ostrogoths the anglo-saxons and the Burgundians are some of the most important kingdoms following Rome's fall most of these successor kingdoms are led by Germanic tribes whom the Romans considered barbarians now there is a portrayal of these kingdoms being formed by savages living in huts after having burned down Roman civilization but many of these kingdoms actually kind of built on top of Rome they worked with Roman aristocracy they were in many ways Roman a good example of this was Otto wacker his Kingdom of Italy actually what Urlacher would naturally make an effort to depose of his Roman competitors but the Roman Senate would actually continue to function during his reign and he drew on their support for a large amount of power and the state would gradually join the ostrogothic kingdom as time went on which in many ways was as well Roman furthermore many of these so-called barbarians were as I discussed earlier rather romanized they spoke varieties of Latin which was slowly evolved into other languages like French Italian and Spanish many follow the Roman religion of Christianity though for many it was Arian Christianity which was slightly different from the Catholic Christianity of Rome regardless the Arian Christians in Italy still heavily respected the Catholic Church centered in a city of Rome many would say that Rome never truly fell all the way but instead it survived in the Latin speaking Catholic Church during the 500s the Franks began moving westward from modern-day Belgium into the rest of modern France their leader Clovis Unified the Frankish tribes effectively laying the foundations for the modern nation of France and the Merovingian dynasty which was to rule it he ruled from a city called Paris which would now serve as a capital of his people up to the modern day Clovis also converted to Christianity becoming one of the first northern Germanic King sedusa and he required that his subjects convert as well laying the foundation for Catholicism to spread throughout Europe as Europe became increasingly fragmented time became harder life became as is often said nasty brutish and short in many ways Christianity be what gave the people of Europe unity and hope and its expansion from its Roman origins begins with these dramatic people's adopting it the Franks however were politically unable to form a large powerful successor state because of inheritance laws when Clovis died his conquests were divided again between his four sons control over power during such division the cross syrup would be the main cause for large amounts of conflict that marked the dark ages in fact in Merovingian France in particular there were very constant civil wars we may have a hard time imagining how this many civil wars can be erupting but the concept of the state as we understand it today was not yet present in Europe in this period of history the perspective at the time was that the country belongs essentially to the King while post-roman Europe was modeled on a skeleton of the Roman Empire in important ways as time passed it became more and more clearly really just a skeleton trade and infrastructure broke down relatively quickly and the past Mediterranean was a Roman lake which connected distant lands allowing trade to flourish now the trade systems broke down as the roads fell into disuse and a countryside and seas became dangerous places much of Europe returned to the more localized agricultural societies that predated a Roman Empire when Rome fell and warfare and plundering of cities became more constant lower-class workers both Roman and barbarian fled to the countryside to escape it and made deals with Roman land owning aristocrats in exchange for work Roman aristocrats offered to house and defend them a system which would evolve into the feudal systems that dominated medieval Europe while we can debate and discuss the validity of the term Dark Ages there are many very obviously dark features of this post Roman world as a result of all the changes we just discussed European societies became much smaller places throughout the centuries following Rome education naturally also fell with infrastructure and societal stability throughout much of the early ages only about 1% of the population mostly the clergy could read life expectancy dropped the pop Malaysian dropped forest started to grow back and Europe became an eerily empty place Roman ruins were often stripped for building supplies the Colosseum in Rome served for a time as a landfill the drop in education and the spreading of information allowed for distant lands to become mysteries again people were regularly nervous about invaders or plunderers whom they didn't see coming arriving suddenly on the scene the mysterious forests and countryside's which were indeed dangerous places also became the subjects of folktales and the early Middle Ages were a source of many myths and folktales and such things with which we are still familiar today people told tales of goblins fairies witches sorcerers the dead etc and many of those tales while they were viewed as unacceptable pagan myths by the dominant Catholic Church still lasts this day in certain cases as original tales but at least generally in form you know something like the Lord of the Rings for example while it was written in the 20th century much of it was based off of Dark Age European mythology life was not all bad for these peoples but certainly as they lived among the ruins of Rome even the most uneducated had an understanding that they were living in a degraded world compared to the past while these kingdoms work to succeed Rome in the West and the east light of Rome continued to shine the eastern Roman Empire did not fall with the West rather it evolved into the Byzantine Empire and though they were Greek speaking and much more Eastern than Western they continued to view themselves as Romans for the next thousand years which present him stood on August 1st 527 the Emperor Justinian came to throne just sitting the great as he came to be called had very clear intentions which he called Renovatio in petty the restoration of the Empire at this point in history Rome only been gone for about 50 years and Justinian intended to bring it back by reconquering Roman territory lost the barbarians after making a peace with the Shah assassin had Persians to bribes he turned his forces westward the general Belisarius invaded the North African vandal lands and subdued them within a year bringing them into the empire next he turned his attention to the lands of the Ostrogoths unfortunately for him he found much less success there it took twenty years rather to subdue them and it was a very debilitating campaign for both sides and in the end though Italy had been reconquered much of it was ruined from the conflict the city of Rome for example had been sacked five times throughout these wars firmly bringing them into the darkness of the Dark Ages along with this failure and it was a considerable failure of a kasbahs antium around 300 thousand pounds of gold to rebuild Italy and war with the Persians presumed Justinian also had a rude awakening in discovering that the societal structure of Rome had essentially fallen apart at this time and that rebuilding it in the West after all this time was much more of a difficult prospect than he had realized though Byzantium held on to the territories and it seemed Rome was making a comeback of sorts a plague then suddenly struck Byzantium known as the plague of Justinian this plague was one of the worst in history it killed 13 percent of the world's population or about half the population of the Byzantine Empire within a year imagine the effects of half the people you know dying within a year this is what Justinian was facing on an empire-wide scale and he himself was eventually struck with the plague he was one of the fortunate ones to survive it but it left him scarred and he became increasingly erratic tyrannical and paranoid moreover though it left the Empire scarred and though Justinian brought about great things with Byzantium culture learning art architecture like the highest afiyah etc the Empire was far too irreparably damaged by this plague to realistically rebuild the Roman Empire it would not be long until Byzantium slowly started to lose the lands at a conquered as well as some of its own original lands as well the Lombards would start taking control of northern Italy and later the Persians Avars Bulgarians Slavs etc were close in on the empire as well Byzantium gradually contracted in 626 Constantinople was besieged by Persians and a vars the Byzantines would win but these wars were indeed fracturing the Empire this fracturing would leave the Empire too weak to defend against what would be the greatest enemy of the Byzantine Empire Islam in the six 30s Arabic followers of a new religion Islam began the quest for world empire they found both Byzantium and purged a - weakened to withstand their assaults and within a decade had spread into Egypt Iran and the border of Anatolia by 700 AD the umayyad caliphates stretched from North Africa to Afghanistan overtaking the Persians and most of Byzantium zhn on European territory the Islamic powers founded by the Arabs in this time have a mixed place in history in some ways definitely they would come to be the enemies of European civilization and the enemies of what was left of Rome in other ways they were the successors of classical civilization in the East the Islamic Golden Age began while much of Europe existed in the aforementioned state in the eighth century and the peoples of this region Arabs North Africans Persians etc took up science history linguistics medicine literature philosophy mathematics and many other fields of Education as Europe was still ruled under fragmented successor states the Arabs began pushing into his spaniel and closer towards Constantinople eventually besieging its in 717 the siege of Constantinople was a failure however and it would leave the Arabs weakened entering Hispania however was not a failure throughout the eighth century the Umayyads would move at the modern-day Spain and Portugal conquering the territories of the Visigothic Kingdom and beginning Islamic rule of the peninsula that would last for centuries meanwhile and the Frankish Empire things were changing the Merovingian dynasty was losing power and Muslim forces were moving in across the Pyrenees into modern France standing in their way however was someone whom the Franks would call shark Martel Martel was old French for hammer Charles the hammer in who miles from meet at the Battle of Tours on October 10th 732 there the franks would score a decisive victory over the Muslims killing 12,000 including the enemy commander what only 1000 or so losses the Pope hailed Martel is having saved Europe from Muslim domination as they would never attempt to invade Europe from the Pyrenees again following this battle Martel's power would grow enormous ly the position as King might seem a natural next step however he was ultimately unable and unwilling to take that position instead he organized himself to hold power and rule from the background while Theodoric of the Merovingian dynasty held the official title this was again mainly due to the importance the Franks placed on tradition and though the monarchy was much less powerful than it had been there was still unwilling to do something such as overthrowing the monarchy they felt it might anger God that it would be affront to their heritage and identity as a people etc and Martel knew his people would not support him for this reason it would be his son rather Pepin is short who whatevers throw the Merovingians and began the Carolingian dynasty in France he did this to the intervention of the only person the Franks felt was higher than their king the Pope the Pope claims Pepin's ascension to the throne was an act of God and few therefore contested it in turn King Pepin would give the church lands which would become the papal States known as the donation of heaven when Pepin died in 768 his son Charles would succeed him Charles the first would become one of the most important rulers of the age earning the title of the great or as he is often called Charlemagne Charlemagne is sometimes called Potter or pie the father of Europe because of his many efforts to reinvigorate and unite Europe after his brother died he would unite his Frankish Kingdom he would then invade northern Italy Germany the Netherlands part of Eastern Europe and even extend into the Balkans and part of Spain and above all he would have a lot of success in doing so he would fight all throughout his life to achieve this along with territorial and political aspirations Charlemagne with the support of the Pope was also heavily preoccupied with spreading Christianity Charlemagne insisted that the Saxons of modern-day Germany convert to Catholicism and those who refused were killed in one example 4,000 hundred Saxons were executed and what is remembered as a massacre of verdun accordingly much of his empire rapidly became Christianized Charlemagne sought not only to expand his empire but to enlighten it from within as well and so he wasn't concerned only what's bringing political and religious unity to Europe but made efforts to restore Europe to the intellectual social cultural and for structural power of the Roman days to the point at which his reign is often called the Carolinian Renaissance he would divide his empire into a number of counties and would constantly travel throughout Europe to make sure his subordinates were following his orders in an age when only around 1% of the population could read Charlemagne insisted education was a key to revitalizing Europe he himself learned how to read and demanded it of other officials and statesmen he built schools across the continent which increased educational opportunities not only for the wealthy but even the lower classes as well this fire of learning which spread throughout Europe would help the continent to restore trade and infrastructure the unity Charlemagne had achieved furthermore allowed for decent trade in such things to be realistic again and the roads were prioritized and guarded Charlemagne had United much of Europe Christianized it brought education and learning to it rebuilt its infrastructure and on the whole improved life for Low's within his nation on Christmas Day in the year 800 Charlemagne knelt at the altar to pray Mass in st. Peter's Basilica Pope Leo the third placed a crown on his head and proclaimed him emperor of Rome there is debate actually about whether or not Charlemagne knew that this was going to happen he let her claim that if he did no he wouldn't have even gone into the church but most historians find it hard to believe that he had no idea that this was going to happen and in fact he didn't exactly dislike the title considering in official documents he preferred to be styled Carolus or any seemless Augustus a deo cornutus Magnus Pacifica's Emperor Otto romanum governance Imperium meaning Charles Most Serene Augustus crowned by God the great peaceful emperor ruling the Roman Empire as one might expect the Byzantines were not very fond of this they tended to regard Western Europeans as uneducated uncivilized barbarian researchers and more importantly the Empress Irina Byzantium considered herself the ruler of Rome not this Frankish barbarian Charlemagne now this was much more than just a petty debate over a title it was another example of strain between Byzantium and the Catholic Church this along with conflict over land claims in Italy would lead to a war between Byzantium and Charlemagne but it would end with land agreements and the Byzantines recognizing Charlemagne as Emperor though not exactly emperor of Rome as time went on however the divide between East and West would only deepen while it seemed like Europe was beginning a streak of recovery external and internal forces will begin to wreak havoc on trello manes Empire Western Europe was about to being closed upon on three sides from the south Islamic North African pirates who begin raiding and plundering southern Europe from the East a terrifying wave of nomadic warriors from Asia known as the Magyars would begin pushing in and from the north perhaps the most fearsome of all a group of pagan scandinavian raiders known as the vikings would seek plunder and opportunity in europe Charlemagne would go to war with a Danish Viking as an 808 but made peace and 811 I've done an in-depth documentary on the Vikings already on my channel as a matter of fact but essentially the Vikings were as I said a group of Scandinavian raiders from modern-day Denmark Sweden and Norway they descended on Europe in the late 8th century on June 8th 793 on an island known as Lindisfarne and the kingdom of Northumbria and modern-day England a group of raiders assaulted an undefended Abbey slaughtering and enslaving anyone in their way this was not necessarily the first Viking raid in history but it is perhaps the most notable as it marked the beginning of the Viking Age terror spread throughout Europe of the brutal Northman why the Vikings came is still a matter of debate the Vikings were said pagans and the pagan Saxons who had been slaughtered by Charlemagne earlier were just south of Denmark so they may have felt concerned about the violence spread of Christianity and they certainly as a result did not like the Franks there was also perhaps a population boom at his time in Scandinavia and there were an excess number of landless men as a result and of course is a constant theme throughout history that large numbers of landless jobless young men tend to go out and cause trouble especially when you factor in that there was potentially a shortage of females in the region because of female infanticide at birth Mae Norris at the time wanted their firstborn is to be males a main factor however was likely simply because they could Europe was becoming wealthier at this time and opportunity for plunder started displaying itself especially on coastal cities and cities along rivers the Vikings through their advanced naval technology exploited this opportunity attacking coasts and even sailing up rivers with large groups of men namely with the longboat design which was unheard of prior to this point the sailing abilities of the Vikings meant simply nowhere was safe they could sail inland France and Germany they could sail to distant lands going as far as North Africa and Byzantium but their favorite target was right next to home the British Isles as Islands very few locations on the British Isles were more than just a few days march from the sea and as the Viking Age progressed there would be more and more Viking influence in Britain and Ireland a few years later in 814 in the face of all this chaos Charlemagne died at the age of 71 Charlemagne had had four sons and throughout his life expected he would have to divide his Empire among them unfortunately for him but fortunately for the Carolingian Empire only one of them Louie outlived him and the Empire passed to him however regardless much of Louie's reign was marked by Civil War and conflict and when he died his empire was divided among his sons in a year 843 three years after his death in the West the territory would be ruled by Charles and the East Louis and in his centre Lothar these divisions would form the basis of France Germany and the Low Countries in such places that remain to this day the division between these kings only encouraged the enemies of Christian Europe the Vikings would increase their raids Muslims would increase their plundering taking slaves and loot and such things as well and the Magyars closed then in some places people were hit by all three of these foes in such times when the central political figures of Europe were divided in war people would turn to the protection of the local Nobles marking some of the beginnings of standard European feudalism in 865 the Vikings took a new step to their approach a great army of Vikings landed on the coast of Northumbria an anglo-saxon kingdom and modern-day England known to the anglo-saxons as the great heathen army they did not come to raid but in fact to settle gradually absorbing lands in England starting with the city of York which they called the Orbach gradually the anglo-saxon lands would fall to the Danelaw standing against them however was the ruler of the kingdom of Wessex in southern England named Alfred in time who become - known as the great he would spend much of his reign in conflict with the Vikings but he would save the last three kingdoms of England from Viking rule though much of the island would remain under Norse rule for centuries with Alfred at the head of these kingdoms he would style himself not king of Wessex but instead king of England laying the foundations for things that come in the late 9th and early 10th centuries the Magyars would begin to form a kingdom in central Eastern Europe a nation which would come to be known as Hungary this kingdom would plunder Europe for decades to come invading both the Western and Eastern world and becoming a specific nuisance to the East Franks as well as the Bulgarians and the Byzantines in 955 however as the Magyars pressed further into lands that would become Germany the King Otto the first would oppose them he met them at the Battle of lector Otto's command was a new type of soldier heavy cavalry an important force in standing up against a horse warriors of the Magyars this heavy cavalry would go on form the foundation of medieval knights auda woodwind repelling the Hungarians and in the eyes of Catholic Europe being an offender of Christendom as Otto continued to work to unite the German tribes and expand his empire he would be crowned in a similar manner as Charlemagne by the Pope being titled Holy Roman Emperor thus the Holy Roman Empire was born meanwhile the Vikings often regarded as destroyers of Europe were in many other ways giving birth to parts of it and going far beyond what their opponents were doing many would integrate into European societies and convert to Catholicism in France in order to appease the Vikings the king would give them land on the northern part of the country which would come to be known as a land of the Norseman or normandy these Normans after integrating with the French would go on to conquer England a century later and lay the foundations for the English monarchy their having the greatest naval technology in Europe they would go on to explore in settle distant lands reaching Iceland Greenland and even North America discovering its centuries before Columbus in Eastern Europe the Vikings would come to claim territory and rural as Slovak people as nobility these Vikings known as the ruse would lay the foundations for modern Russia even as far east as Byzantium the emperor of Constantinople observing their military prowess hired them to be his personal bodyguard known as the Iranian guard ironically the Vikings who brought such darkness in Europe in the end would help bring it out of that darkness into the higher Middle Ages which followed ultimately however the truly most unifying force in medieval Europe for perhaps good and bad was Christianity and the Catholic Church the Catholic Church would stamp out ideas which contradicted its doctrine but it would also be responsible for encouraging the return of education to Europe the church would heavily persecute those who did not fall into the line of thought but oftentimes that meant persecuting rapists thieves murderers and other nefarious people leaders would be held under a degree of rule from the Catholic Church which was in plenty of circumstances a self-interested organization the Catholic Church was also instrumental in restricting self-interested rulers and nobility and held them to his standard of decency and morality the Catholic Church would encourage the code of chivalry among Europeans which turned the medieval knight from a barbarian thug into a servant of piety and morality we can debate the effects that religion and especially religious organizations have on people especially in times like the Dark Ages and we can even call into question how much good and bad that the Catholic Church did in his time was really in the name of religion or if it was out of a self-interested plot but in the end I think it would be fair to say that the Catholic Church played a significant role of bringing Europe out of the Dark Ages even if that role was not wholly good or bad in the eyes of some historians Europe would not return the same level of appreciation and dignity until the Renaissance but around the beginning of the 11th century the dark age of the medieval world was coming to a close trade and infrastructure were returning to former grandeur art and architecture took off modern nation-states notably England France Poland and Denmark saw their foundations in his time and with those nations came the concept of the state and the power which they would come to wield the first Crusades would reintroduce Europe to the intellectual achievements of antiquity and the Islamic Golden Age which were crucial and pulling Europe from the Middle Ages altogether and into the modern world a modern world which by the 11th and 12th centuries was beginning to come into sight as for the Roman Empire it would never truly rise again the Byzantine Empire would survive until the 15th century when Constantinople was finally captured by the Muslim Ottoman Empire in Europe many from the Holy Roman Empire to a Napoleonic France to Mussolini's Italy would claim to be the return of the Roman Empire and though none would ever be truly Roman the legacy of the Romans would last up to the modern day but while Rome laid the foundations for much of Europe and significant parts of the world in fact we should not forget that many other important foundations lie in the efforts of the people who push through and survived a very dark age at this time I like to thank Jonathan Trillo for his patreon support for more videos like this and videos on many other subjects be sure to check out fire of learning and subscribe thank you for watching

Channel: undefined

Views: 1,309,170

Rating: 4.7585464 out of 5

Keywords: Fall of Rome, Dark Ages, Medieval Ages, Middle Ages, Roman Empire, Odoacer, Alaric, Vikings, Charlemagne, Louis, Clovis, Otto I, Magyars

Id: nUfnqqr1oGk

Length: 44min 38sec (2678 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 07 2018