Charles the Simple: The king who made peace with the Vikings
West Frankish king Charles the Simple made a landmark deal with Viking pillager Rollo in 911. What did the treaty contain, and how did it reshape Europe?
Image: Charles the Simple | Public Domain
If you love Michael Hirst’s acclaimed historical drama series Vikings, you likely fondly recall its depiction of the fearsome Norse warrior Rollo. In the series, he’s played in dashing style by English actor Clive Standen and strikes a cushy deal with Frankish emperor Charles.
Was the emperor based on a real-life historical person? Did the deal you see in the show, where Rollo agrees to repel other Vikings’ raids on Frankish soil, actually happen? The answer to both questions is a tentative ‘yes’. As you’d expect with a historical drama, though, some creative liberties are taken when it comes to accuracy.
The character of ‘Emperor Charles’ is at least somewhat based on ‘Charles the Simple’, as he is (not entirely flatteringly) known to history. He ruled West Francia, covering much of what is now modern France, from 898 to 922 under the regnal name Charles III. As we at Sky HISTORY were stunned to discover, he did also take a rather unorthodox approach to keeping power-hungry Vikings at bay.
Charles the Simple’s long and winding road to the throne
When Charles was born on 17th September 879, it was far from clear that he would one day accede to the West Frankish throne. Though a son of King Louis the Stammerer, it was by his second wife Adelaide of Paris. The king’s two sons by his first wife, Ansgarde of Burgundy, took precedence in the line of succession.
These sons, Louis III and Carloman II, held West Francia as co-rulers after their father’s death in 879. Even when the throne was found vacant again in 884, it went to Charles the Fat, at that time already ruling East Francia. When Vikings besieged Paris in the mid-880s, Charles paid them to attack Burgundy instead.
Upon Charles’s death in 888, Odo was elected the new West Frankian king. However, questions over Odo’s right to the throne led some to champion Charles the Simple’s claim instead. His supporters crowned the teenage Charles at Reims Cathedral in 893, but he lacked real power over West Francia until Odo’s death in 898.
Charles the Simple and West Francia’s long-running Viking problem
To say that the Franks had long had problems with marauding Norsemen encroaching on their turf would be putting it mildly. By the time of Charles the Simple’s reign, there had been regular Viking raids on Frankish territory for decades. Frankish attempts to literally take the fight to the Vikings had been met with only limited success.
In this desperate situation, Frankish leaders often resorted to paying the Vikings off, but still the nuisance interlopers kept coming back. So, after Charles the Simple’s forces foiled Rollo’s siege of Chartres in 911, the king decided on a new strategy. Now, he would actually grant Rollo and his followers a tract of land in northern West Francia – on several crucial conditions.
As agreed in the treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte in 911, the Norsemen would gain land along the northern Frankish coast. Rollo would be entitled to administer this new ‘duchy of Normandy’ more or less as he wished. However, he would also be expected to swear fealty to Charles the Simple and fend off other Viking invaders seeking to attack West Francia. Rollo and his men were also required to convert to Christianity.
Charles the Simple’s surprising legacy
Charles has an undeserved reputation as a dimwitted king. This disparaging image has only been exacerbated by modern misinterpretations of his nickname. In truth, the appellation ‘Simple’ was originally only meant to refer to the king’s honest, no-nonsense character, with no aspersions cast on his intelligence.
Indeed, many modern commentators would argue that Saint-Clair-sur-Epte proved effective at finally nullifying the Viking threat. The new Normandy even survived Charles the Simple’s later blunders, such as when he overreached himself by attempting to take over nearby Lotharingia. The debacle eventually cost Charles the West Frankish throne, but Rollo weathered the resulting political storm, remaining Normandy’s ruler until his death in the 930s.
Rollo’s descendants would run the duchy and further bolster its prestige over the next few centuries. One duke of Normandy would even seize the throne of England in 1066, consequently gaining the epithet of ‘William the Conqueror’. Normandy would eventually be incorporated into the state of France, and gain renewed fame as the site of the D-Day landings during World War II.
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