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Here is a passage from Lev' Gumilev's book "Конец и вновь начало" "End and beggining once again"
Sorry for the Google Translate, but i'm too tired to translate it manually.
"Charlemagne died in 814, and with his son Louis Pious, strife broke out, which ended in 841 with the complete collapse of the empire. By what principle did it split? According to the territorial.
The western part, which now forms the bulk of French territory, was Roman-speaking. There they spoke of spoiled Latin, which we now regard as French. The eastern part was German-speaking, there they spoke different German dialects, one of which we are currently studying at school. The Germans understood each other from the fifth to the tenth. The future French understood each other more easily. But most importantly, both of them were the two wings of one empire and could not stand each other.
And in the middle between the Rhone, the Rhine and the Alps settled the third tribe, absolutely not like the Burgundians. The Burgundians were the most cultured of all the Germanic tribes. They were very tall, red-bearded, they did not cut their beards, they also wore pretty thick hair and did not mind drinking, but they were very good-natured and capable of science, i.e. They were Germans, who poured ancient Roman culture. In addition, they were Arians (this is one of the branches of the early Christian church) and therefore stood out among others. They were then forced to accept Catholicism, but they did it with great reluctance and stood out as something special.
Thus, three unlike species of people were formed. And they distinguished each other magnificently. If a person came from somewhere in China or from Persia, then all the Europeans seemed to be the same person, but as soon as he lives there he sees that they are different. And since they were different, they wanted to live differently, and the empire was one: from the Elbe to the Ebro River in Spain and half of Italy (the other half was seized by the Byzantine Greeks). In such a diverse country, management should have been one. But who will get the power was unclear.
Charles had three grandsons, and they seized each other. First two, Louis the German and Carl the Bald, attacked the elder brother of Lothar, who wore the title of emperor, and defeated him at the Battle of Fontenoy. It happened in 841, and this is the year of the birth of Europe. I'll explain why.
Lothar fled, but what was strange, and this is noted even by the chroniclers: usually after the big battle the winners killed the wounded vanquished, and then they said: "Why are we at war, we are still our own, we have different principles, you here defended Lothar, Which was for the unity of the empire, which we do not want, but still we are not strangers. " And they carried water to wounded enemies. The war suddenly acquired features that were not characteristic of the wars of that time.
And it ended with the fact that two years later in the city of Strasbourg, Charles and Louis read an oath to each other, and Louis read in French for the warriors of Charles, and Karl - in German for the soldiers of Louis. The oath was that they divided the country in half, the Germans separately, the French (for the first time this word was pronounced) would also be separately. Before that, there were no French and Germans. There were Welsh, and in the east there were all kinds of German tribes called Teutons. The Germans and the French, as has already been said, are various francs. The Franks were on both sides, for the Franks are the name of the Germanic tribe that led the whole empire, and the empire collapsed."
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