During the 830s and 840s the strategically vital south-eastern marches of the Carolingian empire were restructured. Here, where Germanic, Slav and Latin-Italian-speaking peoples met, Charlemagne had utterly destroyed the wealthy, powerful and supposedly ‘Asiatic’ Avar kingdom at the end of the 8th century. Not being powerful enough to take over all of what had been the vast Avar state, the Carolingians occupied its western parts, while the Turkic Bulgars seized the east, leaving a partially Slav, partially uninhabited power vacuum elsewhere. Continuing Carolingian ambitions created a sophisticated, though not entirely successful, military structure in this part of Europe. Then, late in the 9th century, a new foe appeared: the Magyars or Hungarians as they came to be known, whose style of warfare initially baffled Carolingian armies.

The fragmentation which typified the later 9th and 10th centuries had its impact on the lives of Carolingian and post-Carolingian military Cites. Leadership became increasingly localised and by the end of the period under consideration, especially after Viking, Magyar and Saracenic raiding had been contained, the professional fighting men of France, Germany and Italy would be involved in bitter internal warfare. This ranged from the petty rivalries of neighbouring castle-holders, to major campaigns by royal armies and their vassals.

This almost anarchic state of affairs offered opportunities as well as dangers. In 10th-century France, which faced fewer external threats than Germany, localised small-scale warfare involved relatively few people other than professional fighting men. Most of these owed their allegiance to the increasingly powerful pagi or provincial aristocracy. In late 10th-century Anjou, for example, a loyal cavalryman might hope to be given authority over part of Count Foulque’s widespread territory. Elsewhere in France, humble vasseaux chasis (vassals with their own fiefs) could be virtually autonomous within their own small casamentum or territorial fief. Most of these men no longer lived in their lord’s households and middle-ranking vassals became increasingly attached to their own local territory as it became normal for such fiefs to pass from father to son.