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Two questions:
1) What was the social, political and military organisation/structure of the francish kingdoms after Charlemagne (814-1000) and the split of the empire. Did the kings have any real power over landlords?
2) As a result of this, how did their armies look like? How were they organised? What kind of trooptypes were used?
They were living under democracy and were using rocket launchers.
Feudalism in Germany during the 10th century was better organised than France. This was due to the existence of the great tribal duchies. The population of Germany was less mixed than that of Gaul and the ancient tribes had maintained something of their own national traditions and coherence under their own hereditary dukes. Toward these tribal dukes the people felt a more direct loyalty than they would have accorded to mere feudal superiors. Each of the 5 great duchies Saxony, Bavaria, Franconia, Swabia and Lorainne, formed a feudal state within the kingdom.
To answer you question more directly, the chief problem confronting the 10-11 century monarchs was to control the duchies. Without such control, the king was powerless outside his own lands; with it, he had more effective goverment than he would have had without the tribal organization. Even in the duchies, however, the disintegrating forces of feudalism were at work. The lesser nobles, counts, bishops, knights and mragraves fought for independence of the dukes as the dukes sought independence of the king. Many of them succeeded in transferring their homage from their duke to the king, thus weakening the duchies, but adding little strngth to the monarchy, since their very numbers made it difficult for the king to control them. The weakening of the monarcy after Henry III was at least partly due to the breaking-up of the duchies into smaller units.
As for their armies, they were divided into 4 major groups; heavy cavalry, light cavalry, spear infantry and light infantry.
I got some pics from the net illustrating Late Frankish armies.
Heavy cavalry
http://www.dbaol.com/images/faces/1188_face.jpg
Light cavalry
http://www.dbaol.com/images/faces/1189_face.jpg
Spear-class infantry
http://www.dbaol.com/images/faces/1190_face.jpg
and light infantry
http://www.dbaol.com/images/faces/1191_face.jpg
This is off the top of my head so double check for accuracy is something sounds off, k.
When the empire was divided into three kingdoms (one for each son) the empire really lost a lot of it's power. The German and French halfes each considered themselves as the heir of Charlemagne's empire even though they both were. The Italian kingdom was torn between loyalty to Germany or France, Independence, or the Pope and it was as such that it became a major area of contest that the HRE sent armies south to try and keep the Italians under their control.
The Empire's army was made up of each duchies contributions to the imperial army when they were called up. So the Emperoro in theory would call upon his counts to supply troops (which the counts were responsible for equiping and training) and that would form his army. Now as you'll see the major flaw in this was that if the emperor was weak the counts simply wouldn't supply any troops and the emperor wouldn't be able to do a thing about it. Also Charlemagne had banned forts and castles (so that the counts couldn't hide in them), but as the raids from the Norsemen became more intense castles were allowed again. This meant that the counts were once again able to defy imperial orders.
The empire during Charlemangne's reign had a resurgence of economic power but as the viking raids increased trade to the north was more or less dead. This meant that the empire had to trade to the south with the Arabs which controlled the Western mediterrean at the time. So Jews were brought in as the neuntral party to trade with the Arabs. The empire primarily traded slaves with the Arabs.
Do a few google searches on the empire. It's really interesting and you'll see why Charlemagne is recognized as the mediveal worlds greatest monarch.
Thanks for the info. Credits noted.
Fury of the Northmen Mod