TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > History > Nobility and Expansion Dynamic
- More threat in C8/9. Halsall’s cemetery evidence indicates increasing aristocratic power since C6/7 (backed up by saints’ lives sources) – e.g. Pippinids / Arnulfings.
- RE controlled by taxation / army / prestige of admin jobs in state structure. C6 this system unattractive to Franks à never developed. No returns – economic conditions not right for it. No standing army for protection.
- How then could the aristocracy be controlled? Was the centre of any relevance? Rewards could be used, but it would be totally short-sighted for kings to just squander the fisc. Problem esp acute at the periphery – Aquitaine / Bavaria / Franconia. Poss perpetual redistribution, but short-term solution only.
- Hence importance of expansion – absence of taxation à ‘necessary’ (Reuter). Used loot from Avars / Pavia (Po valley very rich). Saxons were poor, but looting still valuable; a theatre of politics to occupy the magnates. Nobles who didn’t go to war risked being usurped by empowered kinsmen – didn’t dare not to turn up – land control was a roulette wheel – a paranoid existence. King’s power = as arbiter of inheritance.
- Consider also military dynamic generated by prolonged civil war. As with Arabia C6, this could subsequently be directed against other peoples.
- Consider also religious dynamic. Charlemagne’s campaigns fought in the name of God, but also revival of traditional Germanic themes – satiated appetites for expansion of a warrior people.
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