The Succession
Barrie Brill
Pippin was the first of his family to have united the office of mayor of the palace of Austrasia and Neustria under his authority. When Pippin died in 714, the two sons he had had with Plectrude had already died. Drogo, the eldest son of Pippin and Plectrude, had died in 708 while their younger son Grimoald, already mayor of the palace of Neustria, had died a few months before his father. As soon as this happened, Pippin, who was already very ill, and his wife Plectrude had proclaimed as mayor of the palace the young son of Grimoald, Theudoald, who was only six years old. When Pippin died on December 16, 714, the whole of the territories that he had subjected to Frankish authority was theoretically in the hands of a child, in whose name Plectrude ensured the regency. For all those who had accepted the tutelage of the Pippinids reluctantly, this was an opportune moment.
Pippin’s death opened a major crisis which threatened not only the continuance of his own family, but also the unity of the Merovingian kingdoms. This succession crisis can also be explained by the fact there was no body in the Kingdom of the Franks that was capable of arbitrating conflicts of this type. The Merovingian monarch was a pawn in the hands of the mayors of the palace. The episcopate was also much involved in this conflict. The only solution was armed conflict that would bring victory to whoever could group behind him the largest number of supporters and faithful followers in the same way as Pippin II had acquired supremacy over the Frankish kingdom in 687.
However, there was another son, Charles, of a second wife by the name of Chalpaida. The Liber historiae Francorum mentions the birth of this son in the chapter that follows the account of the decisive victory at Tertry over Bercharius, mayor of the palace of Neustria, in 687, by his father Pippin. This victory meant that Pippin was in control of the office of mayor of the palace of Neustria. The marriage of Pippin with Chalpaida that led to the birth of Charles should be understood in the context of the preparations for this crucial confrontation with Neustria. She brought to Pippin the decisive support of a powerful network around Liège and Maastricht. After the account of the battle, the Liber enumerates the Merovingian kings whose deaths quickly succeeded one another without mentioning the child or his mother, who disappeared from the entourage of Pippin to the profit of his other spouse Plectrude. Charles only reappears in the Liber in 716 in the guise of a prisoner: “Charles, in these days, was held under guard by the lady Plectrude. With God’s help, he escaped with difficulty.”[1]
As the son of a second wife, Charles does not bear a characteristic name of the Pippinid family, but make no mistake, he was clearly not a “bastard”, a term that had little meaning in the eighth century. He was born into a world where it was understood that all the sons of a free man could take part in his i