Violent Overthrow of the Government

Today seemed like a good day to blog about the violent overthrow of the government in the Middle Ages.

Now of course this was not an everyday event.  Most governments carried on perfectly peacefully.  New mayors were elected, new counts came to power, new kings inherited without any sign of violence.  Pippin the Short, first Carolingian king, took the throne in 751 after (apparently) persuading his Merovingian predecessor to go off and be a monk.  (Were there threats if he didn't go peacefully? maybe.)  Boso became the first (and almost the only) Bosonid king of Burgundy in 879 by persuading the local bishops and counts to elect him, after his Carolingian predecessor had died (a death in which Boso played no role).

But violence often was involved.  The Scandinavian kingdoms had a very rapid turnover of kings during much of the Middle Ages, many of the kings being murdered by their opponents—who were sometimes their brothers.  The French kingdom in contrast experienced peaceful transfers of power from the late tenth century until the fourteenth century, which everyone agreed was unusual.

In the Middle Ages, as now, fighting was considered an appropriate way to get what one wanted when other methods failed.  Although the Middle Ages was not nearly as violent as often portrayed, as I have discussed earlier, combat was a recognized way of proving one was right–even according to the church, before the thirteenth century.  A battle could be construed as a "trial by combat," with God showing who was in the right by allowing that person to win.

Nonetheless, slaughtering a lot of people always seemed at least somewhat suspect as a Christian deed.  After William the Conqueror made himself king of England in 1066 by winning the Battle of Hastings, where King Harold (the former king) was killed, William and his wife founded a monastery and a nunnery to try to make amends.

Even when a new person had become king, that did not mean they were safe from attacks.  King Boso spent much of his short reign fighting against those who thought he should not be king, including his own brother.  King Charles the Simple was defeated in battle in 922 and locked up for the rest of his life (some have suggested he should be called Charles the Straightforward, taking his Latin nickname, Simplex, to mean not cunning or devious, but I like just plain old Simple, because he really was an incompetent king).

The English kings continued to have violence part of royal transitions after William the Conqueror.  His son became Henry I in 1100 because Henry's older brother Robert was off on Crusade, and when Robert, furious, came home, Henry defeated him in battle and locked him up for the rest of his life.  After Henry I died in 1135, his daughter Mathilda and nephew Stephen spent the next two decades battling each other over who was the rightful king of England.  The English barons forced King John to sign the Magna Carta in 1215 with threats of violence, and they did rebel violently against his son, Henry III.  English historians take the end of the Middle Ages in Britain to arrive in 1485, when King Richard III was defeated and killed in battle by Henry VII.

We now honor Joan of Arc, the only Catholic saint to have been burned at the stake as a heretic by the Catholic church, but her legacy is one of violence:  she defeated the English armies in order to put King Charles VII on the throne in 1422.

Even the leadership of smaller units of government might be determined violently.  Bishops ran their cities all during the Middle Ages, usually in concert with or in tension with the local count, but during the twelfth century the inhabitants began to insist on a role in governance, usually with an elected mayor.  Agreement between all the interested parties was usually reached (fairly) peacefully, but in the 1120s disagreements in the French city of Laon between bishop and townspeople turned into violent riots, with the bishop killed and his body left in the street.

The United States of America is a young country.  We do not have fifteen hundred years of history of Europe's countries during which there were numerous violent changes of government (though 1776, never forget, was an armed rebellion).  Our biggest example of trying to overthrow the government violently was the Civil War, 160 years ago.  Then there's the effort of one year ago, which fortunately failed, but might not next time.

© C. Dale Brittain 2022
For more on medieval political history, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.  Also available in paperback.