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Alps. Its borders very approximately reached the border of the province of Noricum
Mediterraneum from Late Antiquity. This means that almost all the Slavic-settled area of
modern Slovenia – with the exception of the Slovene Drava valley, the most open route to the
principality, which in all probability fell at least partially within the Carantanian sphere –
remained outside the borders of Carantania. This was particularly the case for the Sava valley,
which was separated from the Carantanians by the Karavanke mountains. Only during the
time of the Ottonian dynasty, in the second half of the tenth century, when one can no longer
talk of Carantania but rather of Carinthia as a duchy within a German state, was the
geographical barrier overcome politically when the Carniolan margrave became subject to the
authority of the Bavarian or Carinthian duke.
The Slovene Sava valley as an area was known in the Early Middle Ages by the name
Carniola. The name, derived from the territorial name Carnia, means nothing more than
Little Carnia. The ancient homeland of the Carnians, patria Carnium, lay on the other side of
the continental watershed, in the mountainous world north of the Friulian plain. It is no
coincidence, then, that a Friulian Lombard, Paul the Deacon (writing at the end of the eighth
century but describing events around 740), was the first to use the term Carniola, derived
from Friulian geographical terminology, to describe the Slavic land (patria Sclavorum) to the
east of Friuli. The tribal name Carniolans (Carniolenses) derives from the territorial name,
and its only recorded use is in 820 in the Royal Frankish Annals (Annales Regni Francorum).
All Early Medieval sources – though few in number – that mention Carniola and the
Carniolans, clearly distinguish between two separate Slavic communities, north and south of
the Karavanke mountains.
The mention of the Carniolans in the Annals of 820 was not a passing reference, but a
detailed picture of the great process of social and ethnic stratification developing in the former
Avar territory. Individual Slavic peoples were starting to form during this period among most
of the Slavs in the former Avaria – as attested by the appearance of new Slavic tribal names
(Czechs, Moravians, Guduscans, Timocians, Abodrites, Croats) around the borders of the
former khaganate – and similarly, judging by the name Carniolenses, a separate Slavic tribe
began to form in the upper Sava valley by the end of the eighth century at the latest, taking its
name, like the Carantanians, from the area in which it lived. “Carniola, land of Slavs,” where
the Carniolans lived, very probably had a tribal constitution. And because the term dux is
associated with patria and gens, the enigmatic figure of Slav Vojnomir (Wonomyrus Sclavus)
from the Royal Frankish Annals of 795 can perhaps be linked to this picture of a tribal
principality of Carniolans, as their dux gentis, though the explanation could be quite different.
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The principality of the Carniolans was a further Slavic tribal territory in the eastern Alpine
area, alongside that of Carantania. As the direct eastern neighbour of Friuli during the
Frankish-Avar wars, Carniola recognised Frankish overlordship, perhaps as early as 791, and
certainly by 795–796. Later developments indicate that it retained its tribal constitution, and
was included in a new, expanded March of Friuli.
FRANKISH EXPANSION TO THE SOUTHEAST
Following the subjection and annexation of the Lombard state in 774, which was
finally completed with the quashing of a Lombard uprising in Friuli two years later, the
Franks gained a direct border with the Avars for the first time. The border, which at the time
was not defined by a clear line of demarcation, but rather by a wide tract of no man’s land, ran
approximately along the watershed between the Sava and the Soča (Isonzo) rivers, and the
expansive forests that formed a formidable barrier between the Ljubljana Basin and the Karst.
The lower Vipava valley, and the hilly and mountainous world of the Soča’s middle and upper
course, still belonged to Friuli. Twelve years later, in 788, when Tassilo III, the last Bavarian
tribal prince, had been deposed by Charlemagne, subjecting both the Bavarians and the
Carantanians to his direct rule – with Byzantine Istria coming under Frankish authority at the
same time –, the two powers faced each other along a line stretching from the Danube to the
Adriatic. The same year saw the end of almost half a century of peace between the Avars and
their western neighbours following their unsuccessful Carantanian campaign. Battles between
Franks and Avars, in the north along the Lower Austrian Danube, and in the south in Friuli,
resulted in a number of Frankish victories. These two areas were the strategic springboards for
a large offensive in 791, which officially began a war in which the Frankish plan was to crush
the Avar forces. The main Frankish thrust, personally commanded by Charlemagne, moved
along the Danube to the Raab river, while the southern battlefront, where the Franks pushed
into the upper Sava valley, was a secondary theatre, in contrast to later events, when Friuli
was the starting point for a wide offensive towards the very heart of the Avar dominion in 795
and 796. The Franks’ decisive military success came in 795, when Erik, the duke of Friuli,
sent his army, led by Vojnomir the Slav (Wonomyrus Sclavus), who was – perhaps – a Slavic
prince of the Carniolans in the upper Sava valley, into Pannonia between the Danube and the
Tisza river, where they pillaged the centre of their opponents’ dominions, the Ring of the
Avars. The fate of the Avar khaganate was finally sealed, in 796, by another Frankish military
expedition into central Pannonia, led by Charlemagne’s son, Pippin. Frankish power was