Ljudevit (Lower Pannonia)

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Ljudevit/Liudewit
Duke of Lower Pannonia
Ratimir
Died823
Dalmatia

Ljudevit (pronounced

Croat ruler Ljudemisl, who treacherously killed him.[3]

Rebellions against the Franks

In 818 Ljudevit sent his emissaries to

Emperor Louis the Pious (814-840) sent Cadolah to quell the rebellion. The Frankish Frontier forces led by Cadolah have raided the land and tortured the population, most notably the children. As the Pannonian Slavs were amassing forces, so did the Franks led by Cadolah return in 819. But the Frankish forces were soon defeated; and Cadolah himself had to retreat back to his home Friuli
, where soon he died of disease.

In July 819 on the Council in

Timok) also joined him, because they were jeopardized by the neighbouring Bulgars.[citation needed
]

The Franks sent a large army led by the new

Margrave of Friuli, duke Baldric of Friuli to meet Ljudevit in autumn, the same year while he was conscripting more Carantanian troops along the Drava river. The Frankish forces had numerical advantage, so they pushed Ljudevit and his men from Carniola across the Drava. Ljudevit had to fall back to central parts of his realm. Baldric didn't chase Ljudevit, since he had to pacify the Carantanians. Borna moved with Ljudevit's father-in-law Dragomuž and their forces from the south-west. At the heat of the Battle of Kupa
, his own Guduscani abandoned Borna and crossed to Ljudevit's side; while Dragomuž was killed. Borna escaped from the battlefield with the help of his bodyguards.

Ljudevit seized the opportunity and breached into and raided Dalmatia in December. Borna was too weak, so the Dalmatians defended themselves through sneaky tactics and used attrition as their best ally to exhaust the Pannonian forces. Harsh winter came to the hill areas, forcing Ljudevit to retreat. According to Borna's reports to the Frankish Emperor, Ljudevit suffered heavy casualties: 3,000 soldiers, over 300 horses and much food.

War continues

Map of central Europe in the 9th century, with "Pannonisches Kroatien" in light blue at the bottom.

In January of 820, Borna made an alliance with the Frankish Emperor in

Alemannia that were going to simultaneously invade Ljudevit's lands in the spring. The northern Frankish group moved from Bavaria across Pannonia to make an invasion across the river of Drava. Ljudevit's forces successfully stopped this Army at the river. The southern group moved across the Noric Alps, using the road from Aquileia to Emona.[citation needed] Ljudevit was successful again, as he stopped them before crossing the Alps. The central group moved from Tyrol to Carniola. Ljudevit attempted to halt its advance three times, but every single time would the Franks win, using numerical advantage. When this Army reached the Drava
, Ljudevit had to fall back to the heart of his realm.

The Franks have opened ways for the southern and northern Armies, so they launched a total invasion. Ljudevit concluded that all resistance would be futile, so he retreated to a stronghold that he built on top of hill that was heavily fortified; while his people took shelter in local

Council of Aachen
.

The Emperor discussed again about war plans against Ljudevit on that Council. The Franks decided to repeat the progress, and push towards Ljudevit from three sides again. Ljudevit saw that it was obvious that he couldn't fight the Franks on open field, so he began to construct massive

masons from Italy
.

During the last and final Frankish invasion of 822, the Patriarch from Grado, Fortunat, who was a supporter of Ljudevit, fled to Zadar into exile with the Byzantines.

Flight to Serbs

Slavic principalities in ca. 814 AD.

According to Einhard, the writer of the Royal Frankish Annals, following the final Frankish attack, Ljudevit fled from his seat in Sisak to the Serbs in 822 (Siscia civitate relicta, ad Sorabos, quae natio magnam Dalmatiae partem obtinere dicitur, fugiendo se contulit.).[5][6] In the contemporary Vita Hludovici that description of the Serbs is omitted.[7] Ljudevit later killed the local Serbian župan who took him in and temporarily took over the rule in his župa.[8]

The location and nature of these Serbs mentioned in the primary sources has been a topic of interest for historians since the 19th century. Tadija Smičiklas did not attempt to define the area where Ljudevit fled, while Vjekoslav Klaić wrote it was beyond Sava and Bosna.[5] Ferdo Šišić put the ad Sorabos to the southeast of Sava and Vrbas, near the Dalmatian Croats. Vladimir Ćorović mentioned the flight to the Serbs, but didn't expound on it. The 1953 "History of the peoples of Yugoslavia" published by Školska knjiga added apparently fictitious details to the original story. Anto Babić discussed the original text and whether it was a reference to a single fort or a territory.[9] Svetislav M. Prvanović tried to connect Ljudevit and the Guduscani with the Roman city of Guduscum in eastern Serbia, but using only the interpretation of a single comma in Franjo Rački's text and conjecture. Sima Ćirković thought there was a consensus that the place was somewhere in Bosnia, but called the claims of exact locations speculation. Relja Novaković considered that the argumentation about Bosnia is "pointless" and couldn't be related to Bosnia.[10] Nada Klaić thought that the place Ljudevit fled to was actually the medieval county of Srb by the river Una.[11] Ivo Goldstein acknowledged and accepted the theory that it was located in Srb, but advocated against misinterpreting the scarce historical records.[12] Radoslav Katičić argued against the theory, and Tibor Živković concurred with him,[13] concluding such an idea is "misleading" and "not well established", because the source talks about Serbs not Srb, as holding a large part of Dalmatia and not some "small area around the town of Srb" among others, that "much more accurate to understand that Ludovicus escaped from Siscia by the river Sava to the mouth of Vrbas into Sava".[14] According to Mladen Ančić, the mentioning of "Dalmatia" in 822 and 833 as an old geographical term by the authors of Frankish Annals was Pars pro toto with a vague perception of what this geographical term actually referred to.[15]

According to John Van Antwerp Fine Jr., it was hard to find Serbs in this area since the Byzantine sources were limited to the southern coast, but it is possible that among other tribes existed a tribe or group of small tribes of Serbs.[16] Živković's 2011 interpretation of the Latin text says the second-hand accounts given to the Franks by their agents in Siscia and Croatia establish the existence of some sort of a Serbian claim over parts of (Roman) Dalmatia, similar to the analogous Frankish claim, but not necessarily settlement outside of places already known from other sources.[17] According to Neven Budak, it's difficult to pinpoint a place within the former province of Dalmatia, but most probably was in central or eastern Bosnia.[18]

Death

Soon after the incident with the Serbs, Ljudevit sent an envoy to the Frankish court, claiming that he is ready to recognize the Frankish Emperor Louis the Pious as his supreme ruler.

Vladislav. In the end Ljudemisl treacherously killed him.[8][3]

Annotations

  1. Frankish Annals.[19] This title is translated as "Duke of Lower Pannonia".[20] In older Croatian historiography, his title was claimed to have been "Duke of Pannonian Croatia", which is erroneous, as it is anachronistic. The Croat ethnonym was first mentioned in the late 9th century.[21]

References

  1. ^ a b John Van Antwerp Fine: The Early Medieval Balkans: A Critical Survey from the Sixth to the Late Twelfth Century, 1991, p. 255
  2. ^ Studia Slovenica. Vol. 3. Studia Slovenica. 1960. p. 21. ... in the unsuccessful rebellion of Ljudevit of Posavia (Ljudevit Posavski), leader of the Pannonic Slavs, against the Franks, the semi-independence of the land was definitely at an end. From 828 onward it was administered by Bavarian counts.
  3. ^ a b Scholz 1970, p. 113.
  4. ISBN 978-953-7442-04-0
    .
  5. ^ a b Goldstein, 1985, p. 235.
  6. ^ Curta 2006, pp. 136–137.
  7. ^ Budak 2018, pp. 111.
  8. ^ a b Budak 2018, pp. 182.
  9. ^ Goldstein, 1985, p. 236.
  10. ^ Novaković 1981:Pokušaj da se Ajnhardovi Srbi, među koje je 822. godine pobegao Ljudevit, vežu za Bosnu i time potkrepi pretpostavka da je Bosna bila tada naseljena Srbima, pa da je zato sasvim moguće da je i u H veku bila u sastavu Srbije, smatramo sasvim bespredmetnim. Ljudevitovo bekstvo među Srbe ne može se nikako odnositi na Bosnu bez obzira na to da li je i koliko Srba bilo u to vreme u njoj.
  11. ^ Goldstein, 1985, p. 238.
  12. ^ Goldstein, 1985, p. 243–244.
  13. ^ Tibor Živković: On the Beginnings of Bosnia in the Middle Ages, 2010; in the Yearbook of the Center for Balkan Studies of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, p. 153, in Serbian, [1]
  14. ISBN 978-86-7558-573-2
    .
  15. ^ Ančić, Mladen (1998). "Od karolinškoga dužnosnika do hrvatskoga vladara. Hrvati i Karolinško Carstvo u prvoj polovici IX. stoljeća" [From A Carolingian Official to a Croatian Ruler]. Radovi/Institute for Historical Sciences of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zadar. 40. Institute for Historical Sciences of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zadar: 32.
  16. ISBN 0472025600
  17. ^ Živković 2011, pp. 392–396.
  18. ^ a b Budak 2018, pp. 181–182.
  19. ^ Balcanoslavica. Vol. 5–7. 1977. p. 114. The report refers to the uprising of Liudewitus, dux Pannoniae inferioris (Ljudevit Posavski), which was joined by the inhabitants of Carniola (Annales regni Francorum, ad a. 818 — 823).
  20. ISBN 978-3-631-57011-1
    .
  21. ISSN 1334-1375
    . Retrieved 2012-07-27.

Sources
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