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Charlemagne: King Charlemagne
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Above all else Charlemagne was a warrior king and was almost constantly at war. He led his armies on yearly campaigns as a matter of course, it was not a question not of going to war, but whom to fight. Ruthless and cruel in battle, he fought, not primarily for spoils, but for what he considered to be the higher goals of Christianity and universal order. When advised by the Pope that the Lombards were again threatening papal territory, he led his armies into Italy in 774 and broke the Lombard power. Now he styled himself king of the Franks and the Lombards. The most arduous campaigns were against the Saxons and lasted 30 years.
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Charlemagne's grandfather was Charles Martel, the warrior who crushed the Saracens (see Charles Martel). Charlemagne was the elder son of Bertrade ("Bertha Greatfoot") and Pepin the Short, first "mayor of the palace" to become king of the Franks. Although schools had almost disappeared in the 8th century, historians believe that Bertrade gave young Charles some education and that he learned to read. His devotion to the church became the great driving force of his remarkable life.
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Charlemagne, being a model knight as one of the Nine Worthies, enjoyed an important afterlife in European culture. One of the great medieval literary cycles, the Charlemagne cycle or the Matter of France, centers around the deeds of Charlemagne and his historical commander of the border with Brittany, Roland, and the paladins who are analogous to the knights of the Round Table or King Arthur's court. Their tales constitute the first chansons de geste. Charlemagne is depicted as the champion of Christendom against Muslims and pagans. Charlemagne ... dealt diplomatically with Muslims, exchanging ambassadors with Harun al-Rashid and negotiating some degree of responsibility for the welfare of Christians and Christian sites in Palestine.
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The scope of Charlemagne's activity reflected the size of his empire: he campaigned from the Ebro to the Danube, the Elbe to the Po, against Byzantines and Muslims, Avars and Danes, Saxons and Slavs. Campaigns took place annually, contemporaries recording their surprise in those years when no army was sent forth. Before the 790s, Charlemagne as a rule led in the field in person; thereafter his sons and favoured aristocrats were given responsibility for specific campaigns. He completed the work of his predecessors in establishing direct Carolingian rule in the traditional spheres of Frankish overlordship, notably with the absorption of the Bavarian duchy—in effect an independent principality—through a series of diplomatic initiatives which reached fruition in 788. Beyond this, three new theatres of conquest emerged. First, Italy, where he followed his father's policy of intervention in defence of the papacy, defeating and annexing the Lombard kingdom which dominated the north of the peninsula in a single campaign in 774.
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Charlemagne was born about 742, the elder son of the Frankish leader Pepin the Short. Pepin held the ancestral title of mayor of the palace under the Merovingian dynasty of Frankish kings. However, in the wake of a long line of increasingly weak Merovingian kings, Pepin abandoned this lesser title and in 751 assumed the kingship of the Franks. In order to legitimate his rule, Pepin sought the support of the pope. In exchange for a promise to protect the pope’s lands in Italy from an invasion, Pope Stephen II officially crowned Pepin in 754. Besides crowning Pepin, the pope anointed both Charlemagne and his younger brother Carloman.
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It is difficult to conceive a more dreary and dismal state of society than existed in France, and in fact over all Europe, when Charlemagne began to reign. The Roman Empire was in ruins, except in the East, where the Greek emperors reigned at Constantinople. The western provinces were ruled by independent barbaric kings. There was no central authority, although there was an attempt of the popes to revive it,--a spiritual rather than a temporal power; a theocracy whose foundation had been laid by Leo the Great when he established the jus divinum principle,--that he was the successor of Peter, to whom were given the keys of heaven and hell. If there was an interesting feature in the times it was this spiritual authority exercised by the bishops of Rome: the most useful and beneficent considering the evils which prevailed,--the reign of brute force. The barbaric chieftains yielded a partial homage to this spiritual power, and it was some check on their rapacity of violence.
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King Charlemagne