SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CHANGE

THE POLITICAL SHAPE AND SOCIAL SYSTEMS of Europe underwent substantial changes during the tenth century. The Carolingian dynasty was replaced in France by the Capetians. But the land over which they reigned had seen power decentralised to such an extent that rulers in the provinces exercised as much real power as the king, and Normandy, Anjou and Flanders in particular were effectively independent powers, following their own domestic and foreign policy agendas. Below the level of these local princes, powerful families fought and feuded and schemed to increase their own powers. In every case, control of fortifications was to be a central element of the political equation. But by and large these fortifications were no longer the walled civitates that have been familiar throughout the story so far, but newer, smaller fortresses, combining a number of functions : the castles had made their appearance. Alongside them, the political and social system known as feudalism took root and shaped the continent for hundreds of years.

The kings of East Francia or Germania had been more successful in preserving at least the outward trappings of Charlemagne's power, as well as securing his imperial title. The kings who originated in the Saxon duchy made Ottonian Germany a beacon for European civilisation. They established their power through a process of continuous struggle both with rivals at home, close neighbours such as the Slavs, themselves evolving towards settled states, and foreign invaders, in particular the Magyars. These struggles, and the need to impose a new royal house in a land where local rivalries and differences were deep rooted, were also reflected in the defences of this century.

On the fringe of the continent, but certainly not isolated from European culture, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England was consolidated under the leadership of the royal house of Wessex and became one of the more prosperous and most centralised monarchies of the age. But at the end of the century, under now weak leadership, it was to fall victim once again to attack from Norsemen, who set in train through the conquest by Cnut the series of events leading ultimately to the Norman conquest. Other Vikings meanwhile continued their settlement and plundering in Ireland.