An biography from Will Durant's
STORY OF CIVILIZATION
Beyond the legends of
Charlemagne lies a biography worthy of the tales. To
the medieval mind, only King Arthur vied with Charlemagne as the finest
example of what a Christian king could be. Kind, yet fiercely defensive of
his family and Empire, there is much to admire. His exploits spawned both
histories and romances, like all good legends it stood firmly rooted in
history. The biography offered here was published in Will Durant's History
of Civilization, but a small part of an encyclopedic historical survey. I
include it here in the KCT resources because it might prove useful and
inspiration to those seeking a basic introduction to this most famous of
The greatest of medieval kings was born in 742, at a place unknown. He was
of German blood and speech, and shared some characteristics of his people-
strength of body, courage of spirit, pride of race, and a crude simplicity
many centuries apart from the urbane polish of the modern French. He had
little book learning; read only a few books- but good ones; tried in his old
age to learn writing, but never quite succeeded; yet he could speak old
Teutonic and literary Latin, and understood Greek.
In 771 Carloman II died, and Charles at twenty-nine became sole king. Two
years later he received from Pope Hadrian II an urgent appeal for aid
against the Lombard Desiderius, who was invading the papal states.
Charlemagne besieged and took Pavia, assumed the crown of Lombardy,
confirmed the Donation of
Pepin, and accepted the role of protector of the
Church in all her temporal powers.
Returning to his capital at Aachen, he began a series of fifty-three
campaigns- nearly all led in person- designed to round out his empire by
conquering and Christianizing Bavaria and Saxony, destroying the troublesome
Avars, shielding Italy from the raiding Saracens, and strengthening the
defenses of Francia against the expanding Moors of Spain. The Saxons on his
eastern frontier were pagans; they had burned down a Christian church, and
made occasional incursions into Gaul; these reasons sufficed Charlemagne for
eighteen campaigns (772-804), waged with untiring ferocity on both sides.
Charles gave the conquered Saxons a choice between baptism and death, and
had 4500 Saxon rebels beheaded in one day; after which he proceeded to
Thionville to celebrate the nativity of Christ.
At Paderborn in 777 Ibn al-Arabi, the Moslem governor of Barcelona, had
asked the aid of the Christian king against the caliph of Cordova. Charles
led an army across the Pyrenees, besieged and captured the Christian city of
Pamplona, treated the Christian but incalculable Basques of northern Spain
as enemies, and advanced even to Saragossa. But the Moslem uprisings that
al-Arabi had promised as part of the strategy against the caliph failed to
appear; Charlemagne saw that his unaided forces could not challenge Cordova;
news came that the conquered Saxons were 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, through the passes of the Pyrenees.
In one such pass, at Roncesvalles in Navarre, a force of Basques pounced
down upon the rear guard of the Franks, and slaughtered nearly every man in
it (778); there the noble Hruodland died, who would become three centuries
later the hero of France’s most famous poem, the Chanson de Roland.
In 795 Charlemagne sent another army across the Pyrenees; the Spanish March-
a strip of northeast Spain- became part of Francia, Barcelona capitulated,
and Navarre and Asturias acknowledged the Frankish sovereignty (806).
Meanwhile Charlemagne had subdued the Saxons (785), had driven back the
advancing Slavs (789), had defeated and dispersed the Avars (790-805), and
had, in the thirty-fourth year of his reign and the sixty-third of his age,
resigned himself to peace.
In truth he had always loved administration more than war, and had taken to
the field to force some unity of government and faith upon a Western Europe
torn for centuries past by conflicts of tribe and creed. He had now brought
under his rule all the peoples between the Vistula and the Atlantic, between
the Baltic and the Pyrenees, with nearly all of Italy and much of the
Balkans. How could one man competently govern so vast and varied a realm? He
was strong enough in body and nerves to bear a thousand responsibilities,
perils, and crises, even to his sons’ plotting to kill him. He had in him
the blood or teaching of the wise and cautious Pepin III, and of the
ruthless Charles Martel, and was something of a hammer himself. He extended
their power, guarded it with firm military organization, propped it with
religious sanction and ritual. He could vision large purposes, and could
will the means as well as wish the ends. He could lead an army, persuade an
assembly, humor the nobility, dominate the clergy, rule a harem.
He made military service a condition of owning more than a pittance of
property, and thereby founded martial morale on the defense and extension of
one’s land. Every freeman, at the call to arms, had to report in full
equipment to the local count, and every noble was responsible for the
military fitness of his constituents. The structure of the state rested on
this organized force, supported by every available psychological factor in
the sanctity of anointed majesty, the ceremonial splendor of the imperial
presence, and the tradition of obedience to established rule. Around the
king gathered a court of administrative nobles and clergymen- the seneschal
or head of the palace, the “count palatine”or chief justice, the
“palsgraves”or judges of the palace court, and a hundred scholars, servants,