General Notes

REFN: 7080AN
Alias:<ALIA> Charles the /Great/
The greatest of medieval kings was born in 74 2, at a place unknown. He w
as of German blood and speech, and shared some characteristics of his peop
le- strength of body, courage of spirit, priDe of race, and a cruDe simpli
city many centuries apart from the urbane polish of the modern Frenc
h. He had little book learning; read only a few books- but good ones; tri
ed in his old age to learn writing, but never quite succeeded; yet he cou
ld speak old Teutonic and literary Latin, and understood Greek.
In 771 C arloman II died, and Charles at twenty-nine became sole king. T
wo years later he received from Pope Hadrian II an urgent appeal for aid a
gainst the Lombar d Desiderius, who was invading the papal states. Charlem
agne besieged and too k Pavia, assumed the crown of Lombardy, confirmed t
he Donation of Pepin, and accepted the role of protector of the Chur
ch in all her temporal powers. Returning to his capital at Aachen, he beg
an a series of fifty-three campaigns- nearly all led in person- design
ed to round out his empire by conquering and Christianizing Bavaria and Sa
xony, destroying the troublesome Avars, shieldin g Italy from the raidi
ng Saracens, and strengthening the defenses of Francia against the expandi
ng Moors of Spain. The Saxons on his eastern frontier were pagans; they h
ad burned down a Christian church, and made occasional incursions into Gau
l; these reasons sufficed Charlemagne for eighteen campaigns (772 -804), w
aged with untiring ferocity on both sides. Charles gave the conquered Saxo
ns a choice between baptism and death, and had 4500 Saxon rebels behead
ed in one day; after which he proceeded to Thionville to celebrate the nat
ivity of Christ. At Paderborn in 777 Ibn al-Arabi, the Moslem govern
or of Barcelona, had asked the aid of the Christian king against the cali
ph of Cordova. Charles led an army across the Pyrenees, besieged and captu
red the Christian city of Pamplona, treated the Christian but incalculab
le Basques of northern Spain as enemies, and advanced even to Saragossa. B
ut the Moslem uprisings that al-Arabi had promised as part of the strate
gy against the caliph failed to appear; Charlemagne saw that his unaided f
orces could not challenge Cordova ; news came that the conquered Saxons we
re in wild revolt and were marching in fury upon Cologne; and with the
better part of valor he led his army back, in long and narrow file, throu
gh the passes of the Pyrenees. In one such pas s, at Roncesvalles in Navar
re, a force of Basques pounced down upon the rear guard of the Franks, a
nd slaughtered nearly every man in it (778); there the noble Hruodland die
d, who would become three centuries later the hero of France’s most famo
us poem, the Chanson De Roland.
In 795 Charlemagne sent another army across the Pyrenees; the Spanish Marc
h- a strip of northeast Spain- be came part of Francia, Barcelona capitula
ted, and Navarre and Asturias acknowledged the Frankish sovereignty (806
). Meanwhile Charlemagne had subdued the Saxons (785), had driven back t
he advancing Slavs (789), had defeated and dispersed the Avars (790-805
), and had, in the thirty-fourth year of his reign an d the sixty-thi
rd of his age, resigned himself to peace. In truth he had alw ays loved ad
ministration more than war, and had taken to the field to force s ome uni
ty of government and faith upon a Western Europe torn for centuri
es pa st by conflicts of tribe and creed. He had now brought under his ru
le all the peoples between the Vistula and the
Atlantic, between the Baltic and the Pyrenees, with nearly all of Italy a
nd much of the Balkans. How could one man competently govern so vast and v
aried a realm? He was strong enough in body and nerves to bear a thousa
nd responsibilities, perils, and crises, even to his sons’ plotting to ki
ll him. He had in him the blood or teaching of the wise a nd cautious Pep
in III.