Subscribe now for full access and no adverts
Charles the Great – known as Charlemagne – was one of the undoubted titans of the medieval world. Born in c.742, he has been lauded since his death in 814 as the saviour of Christendom: most famously, perhaps, in The Song of Roland, the epic 11th-century poem based on his fight against the Moors (Muslims) of Spain. As the King of the Franks for almost five decades, he expanded the inheritance left to him by his father (Pepin the Short) and grandfather (legendary military leader Charles Martel) to cover a territory that stretched over more than a million square kilometres, from the Ebro to the Elbe, and from the Netherlands to Provence. In doing so, he united much of the continent of Europe for the first time since the fall of Rome, and built an empire (later to become the Holy Roman Empire) that lasted more a millennium, until the abdication of Franz II in 1806.
While many of the central facts of his life and reign are well known, Charlemagne himself seems still to be a remote figure, lost in the mists of time. Though his feats have long been celebrated, no contemporary portrait of him survives, and the absence of written correspondence means that his thoughts and feelings remain largely unknown. Even Einhard, his trusted courtier and secretary, whose biography appeared shortly after his death, complained that he knew little of his subject’s early years.
That void has left Charlemagne’s story open to interpretation, and to a thousand years of myth-making. Today, opinion appears still to be divided. To many, he remains the ‘father of Europe’ – the man who, almost single-handedly, led the continent out of the Dark Ages, and provided the platform on which our modern world is built. Others see something darker, and feel uncomfortable with this tale of a strong man whose version of ‘European union’ was created using brute force against its inhabitants. Where both sides agree, however, is on the remarkable nature of his military accomplishments.
In the first part of our special feature for this issue, Stephen Roberts traces the life of this extraordinary individual; while in the second part, he looks in more detail at Charlemagne’s victory at Pavia, which helped him establish the foundations of the Holy Roman Empire.
Father of a continent: Charlemagne, c.742-814
Charlemagne, a.k.a. Charles the Great (c.742-814), was King of the Franks and Roman Emperor, having been crowned on Christmas Day 800, just over 1,225 years ago. He was a typical German apparently: round-skulled; unusually tall at well over six feet; broad and strong-bodied, although with a disguised pot-belly; in robust health; well-measured, with feet in proportion to his height; an athletic swimmer; large and lively eyed; with a nose of above-average length, a thick, short neck, and full yet grey hair; cheerful but surprisingly shrill-voiced; and a preferer of Frankish dress. For reasons which will become clear, he has been dubbed the greatest European ruler since Roman times – a leader and administrator, who valued intellectuals, even though he couldn’t himself write.
Born most likely at Aachen, in what is now North Rhine-Westphalia, he was the eldest son of Pepin the Short (c.714-768) and the grandson of the famed military leader Charles Martel (c.688-741). After his death, Martel left a virtual kingdom, which Charles enlarged into an empire 50 years later. When Pepin died on 24 September 768, Charles (then in his mid-20s) and his brother Carloman jointly succeeded; then on Carloman’s early demise in 771, it was Charles’s fate – or fortune – to become sole king.
Charles was a true heir to the traditions of Pepin, who had interceded on behalf of the then Pope, Stephen II, against the Lombards, a Germanic people who conquered most of the Italian peninsula between the mid-6th century and 774. Already wary of the Lombards, Charles later married then repudiated the daughter of the Lombard king Desiderius (c.720-786), who would turn up in Italy to ‘protect’ the Pope. Charles’s raison d’être was to maintain Frankish policy: expanding the kingdom’s rule to include all Germans (a task he would complete except for those in Scandinavia and Britain); achieving a close understanding with the papacy; and supporting church reform, which would establish the foundations of medieval Christian unity.
Frankish lands then consisted of present-day northern France, western Germany, and Belgium, and over a 30-year period he would subjugate the Saxons, leading his army into 18 battles against them (and ordering a mass beheading after one of them), take Bavaria, fight campaigns in Hungary and Spain, and conquer parts of northern Italy. Backed by the Pope, but also supporting him during a time of conflict with the eastern empire in Constantinople (Byzantium), Charles created a vast empire of practically all Christian lands in western Europe, albeit minus parts of Spain, southern Italy, and the aforementioned Britain. Charles was a religious man, so his support for the Pope was unsurprising, and he even tried to ban dancing in his empire because of the pastime’s pagan origins.
Waging war
It was not long before Charles found himself waging war, fighting against the Saxons in 772. At the bidding of Adrian I, the latest pope, he crossed the Alps in 773 and overthrew the kingdom of the Lombards – becoming King of the Lombards himself, absorbing their kingdom into the Frankish empire, and confirming Ravenna to the papal see. Charles also extended his rule to Venetia, Istria, Dalmatia, and Corsica. Pavia was taken after a nine-month siege (see accompanying article on p.26), while Spoleto and Benevento were conquered too. With his Lombard kingdom absorbed into Charles’s burgeoning Frankish empire, Desiderius’s fate was to be the last Lombard ruler exercising regional kingship.
On a visit to Rome in 774, the first of any Frankish monarch, Charles confirmed the Donation of Pepin, which founded the Papal States and began the temporal (secular) power of the papacy, while emphasising he was sovereign even in papal lands, permitting the Pope only an honorary primacy as per Byzantine tradition. It was a quid pro quo between the Franks and the papacy, and meant the latter no longer had to worry about the Lombard menace or the overlordship of some Exarch (governor of a distant province under the Byzantine emperors). Both sides were winners – and the fall of the Lombards was important, too, for Italy, which saw no equivalent unifying force until the 19th century. Meanwhile, Charles regarded it as his duty to protect Church and Pope, and to maintain the faith. Although Charles recognised the Pope’s uniqueness, he treated him like any Frankish bishop, exercising supremacy over the Church, legislating, presiding at synods, and deciding appointments.
In 775, the industrious Charles again reduced the Saxons, then in 776 suppressed a revolt in Italy, before in 777 achieving the submission of the Saxon chiefs. It had been a series of spectacular successes. Charles invaded Spain to fight the Moors and Arabs in 777-778, but was checked by an heroic defence at Saragossa; there was also a Frankish defeat at Roncesvalles in 778, when his rearguard was annihilated by Basques. (The epic French poem The Song of Roland is based on this battle and his leading of the Christian fight against the Muslims – or Moors – of Spain.) Wars with Spain continued throughout the century, however, with Charles ultimately conquering north-eastern Spain up to the Ebro. Meanwhile, he was also minded again to crush the Saxons.
Charles was in Rome, in 781, when the Pope crowned his son, another Pepin, Pepin of Italy (777-810), as King of Italy, and yet another son, Louis the Pious (778-840), as King of Aquitaine. The Saxons though, in arms once more, destroyed a Frankish army in 782 – an affront which Charlemagne would avenge, albeit apparently with some trepidation. A more general rising ensued during the years 783-785; Charlemagne succeeded in getting the chiefs to submit to baptism, becoming his faithful vassals in the process. Hearts and minds were won.
It had been a long, costly, and bitter struggle, however, lasting 30 years – and while Christianity was now forcibly introduced, there was still stubborn pagan resistance. As a result, Charles established the Bishopric of Bremen (around 781-787) as part of the ‘Saxon missions’ to create a Christian beachhead in this troublesome region. In 787-788, Bavaria was absorbed into his burgeoning dominions, its duke, Tassilo, first made a vassal, then deposed, followed by the country of the Avars on the lower Danube as far as the Raab over 795-796. In 796, Charlemagne was moved to write to another pope, Leo III (Adrian having died in 795): ‘Our task is, with the aid of divine piety, to defend the holy church of Christ with arms… Your task, most holy father, is to lift up your hands to God, like Moses, so as to aid our troops.’
The eastern ‘mark’, the nucleus of the future Austrian empire, was established by Charles to defend the frontier there in 798. The following year, the notable Saxon priest and scholar Alcuin (c.735-804) was talking up Charlemagne’s legend: ‘If many people follow your enthusiastic endeavours, perhaps a new Athens might be created in the land of the Franks, or rather a much better one’ (letter to Charlemagne, March 799). Pope Leo III, a pliant pontiff, actually dated his pontificate by Charles’s regnal years, but was driven from Rome in 799. Having sought refuge at Charlemagne’s court, he was restored to Rome by Frankish troops.
Emperor of the Romans
In 800, Charlemagne was marching into Italy again, this time to support Leo III against rebelling Romans. It was on Christmas Day of that year that Charles was crowned by the Pope in St Peter’s Church, becoming the first Holy Roman Emperor to be crowned in this way (the last coming in 1530). Duly saluted as Carolus Augustus, Emperor of the Romans, the 48-year-old Charles became Charles the Great in the process. Pope Leo III had to find a crown to plonk on his head, along with the holy oil or ‘unction’ that had traditionally been reserved for bishops and other high-ranking clergy.
When Leo used the oil for a monarch’s coronation, he was laying claim to a superior and vital role for his Church. It seems from his subsequent comments that Charlemagne was not entirely happy at the outcome, although perhaps this was false modesty: ‘I should never have entered the church on that day, though it was an important feast, could I have known the Pope’s intention in advance’ (on his coronation as Emperor on 25 December 800). Charles’s regret, false or otherwise, was also reported by Einhard (c.775-840), his dedicated servant and biographer. Alcuin had no doubts though: ‘Happy is the people for whom divine mercy has provided so good and wise a ruler’ (letter to Charlemagne while he was still in Italy following his coronation in Rome, September/October 801).
Charlemagne may, in fact, have been concerned about Byzantine reaction, as the 800 coronation marked a return to dualism, with two emperors in an undivided empire, and Byzantium did indeed regard Charles as some sort of usurper, more German than Roman, like his people. Charlemagne even considered a unifying marriage with the Empress Irene; however, the papal coronation, viewed as an act of rebellion by the Byzantines, marked a clear break between Constantinople and Rome. The alliance between northern Europe and the centre of western Christendom would see not only Byzantium effectively excluded, but also a bypassing of Ravenna (the seat of Byzantine’s governor, the Exarch, in Italy, and where its archbishop held second place in Italy after the Pope). Charlemagne used Ravenna as his northern Italian admin base, while also pinching its Classical columns and capitals for his building work at Aachen, where he established his own capital on the Rhine’s right bank.
After the brief reign of the first Byzantine empress (Irene, r. 797-802), the next emperor, Nicephorus (r. 802-811), made peace with Charlemagne, when the two emperors recognised Venice as Byzantine, accepting her mainland trading rights (810); the Eastern Empire retained southern Italy, Venice, and Dalmatia. Subsequently, the emperor Michael I (r. 811-813) eventually recognised Charlemagne’s title in the west in 812 in return for his sovereignty over Venice, Istria, and Dalmatia. The Muslims in north-eastern Spain were gradually suppressed, with Barcelona taken in 801 and the Spanish March created.
Charlemagne’s fame spread all over the known world.
This was just the latest in a series of Marks established after c.782 to hold the conquests, and puts one in mind of the Welsh Marches. There was the Dane Mark, the Altmark against the Wends, the Thuringian Mark, Bohemian Mark, Ostmark versus the Avars, Friulian Mark on the Italian border, and now the Spanish March. The Marks were also centres for colonisation and ‘Germanisation’. Charlemagne’s reach was shown by his protectorate over the Holy Places, the Holy City being a joint shrine of Christian and Muslim; this protectorate was recognised by Harun al-Rashid (c.760s-809) in 807. Al-Rashid was the fifth Abbasid Caliph (r. 786-809), his reign regarded as the beginning of the Islamic Golden Age.
Finale
The remaining 15 years or so of Charlemagne’s reign were spent consolidating his vast empire, stretching from the Ebro (in the Iberian peninsula) to the Elbe (in central Europe). Bishoprics were founded in the Saxon lands, and many Slavs even beyond the Elbe were subjugated. It seemed like he was a modern Alexander, as though his empire knew no bounds. In the Frankish state, Charlemagne continued centralising, although taxation was replaced by service, with the never-ending military campaigns reducing small farmers and hastening the trend to serfdom. Charlemagne tried to compensate by allowing groups of poorer farmers to nominate a single soldier and by excusing the poorest from military service. The basis of later feudalism was established. Missi dominici were introduced in 802, as the officers on circuit in a given district, holding their own courts and supervising the financial, judicial, and clerical administration, becoming an essential link between central and local government. Mark grafen were also set up over the marks, with extended powers.
Rather like his near-contemporary Alfred the Great, Charlemagne was not just a man of war but one of culture. This seems to be what it takes to get that ‘Great’ suffix. He enthusiastically promoted arts and education, as well as agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing. He built extravagant palaces, especially those at his posited birthplace Aachen and at Ingelheim near Bingen, as well as many churches. Academics were encouraged to come to his court, and Charlemagne himself spoke Latin and read Greek, even if he couldn’t learn to write. He set up the Palace School under Alcuin, while local schools were also established with clerics given grants for the purpose. Though no general system of education was introduced into the Frankish Empire, there was nevertheless a learning revival. Latin prevailed over Greek, for example; the Frankish scholar and courtier Einhard, who came to the Palace School from Fulda, wrote his biography of Charles in the style of the Roman historian Suetonius. The court contained scholars and literati of almost every known nationality. Charles the Great’s fame spread to all parts of the known world. In 798, Harun al-Rashid sent ambassadors. Although Charlemagne’s health was known to be robust, he fell victim to repeated fevers in 810, and towards the end of his life he would be seen to drag one foot.
Charlemagne, a most commanding presence in life, was buried at Aachen. He had died, most likely from influenza, on 28 January 814, at the age of 71. His reign had been a noble attempt to consolidate order and Christian values among Western peoples. Unfortunately, a legacy is sometimes only as secure or as strong as the person who follows, and his successors proved to be weak, the antithesis of Charlemagne, and the stability of his reign was replaced by conflict.
Charlemagne’s legacy lived long, nevertheless. As well as his Capitularies, or collections of laws, there are letters and poems written in Latin that have been attributed to him. His remarkable life was written up by his secretary, the aformentioned Einhard, with many modern versions following. The eastward march or Drang nach Osten of the Germans began under him, and some would say never wholly ceased. He had established a Carolingian dynasty that would prove to have staying power, ruling an empire for 187 years, while the empire itself lasted over a millennium until the abdication of Franz II in 1806. Both Germans and the French regard him as their first and greatest emperor.
A century after his death, the emperor Otto I mimicked Charlemagne by having his capital at Aachen, too, a regal place where more than 30 Holy Roman Emperors were crowned over the next six centuries. Frederick I, a.k.a. ‘Barbarossa’ (who reigned as King of Germany from 1152 to 1190, and as Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 to 1190), was a keen student of history and regarded himself as heir to the traditions of Charlemagne, among others. In fact, he went as far as to canonise Charlemagne while he pursued his ambition of restoring the glories of the Holy Roman Empire (Charlemagne had to wait more than 350 years because apparently his ‘sexual conquests were no less extensive than his territorial ones’). Sadly for Charlemagne (not that he knew), the pope, Paschal III, was an unofficial ‘anti-Pope’ (set up in opposition to the officially elected Pope), so the Church never accepted the canonisation. When Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy (1396-1467) became head of the union of the Low Countries, he was the first such since Charles the Great, giving another clue to the magnitude of the man.
The Belgian historian Henri Pirenne (1862-1935) came up with a good line when he declared: ‘Without Muhammed, Charlemagne is inconceivable’; pithy but thought-provoking. He meant that Islam’s conquests and consequent disruption of ancient trade patterns, which had once united all the shores of the Mediterranean, forced northern Europe to develop its own economic base; Charlemagne took advantage of this opportunity. Of lesser import is The Pilgrimage of Charlemagne, an old French epic poem, originally of c.1140, describing Charlemagne’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem; it is entirely fictional.
Further reading:
• J L Nelson, King and Emperor: A New Life of Charlemagne (Penguin, 2020).
• A Barbero, Charlemagne: Father of a Continent (University of California Press, 2018).
All images: Wikimedia Commons, unless stated otherwise
You can read the second part by Stephen Roberts on The Siege of Pavia here and find an infographic on Charlemagne from life to death here.
You must be logged in to post a comment.