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Charles the Bald (13 June 823 - 6 October 877), Holy Roman Emperor (875-877, as Charles II) and King of West Francia (840-877, as Charles II, with the borders of his land defined by the Treaty of Verdun, 843), was the youngest son of the Emperor Louis the Pious by his second wife Judith.

Struggle against his brothers

He was born on 13 June 823 in Frankfurt, when his elder brothers were already adults and had been assigned their own regna, or subkingdoms, by their father. The attempts made by Louis the Pious to assign Charles a subkingdom, first Alemannia and then the country between the Meuse and the Pyrenees (in 832, after the rising of Pepin I of Aquitaine) were unsuccessful. The numerous reconciliations with the rebellious Lothair and Pepin, as well as their brother Louis the German, King of Bavaria, made Charles's share in Aquitaine and Italy only temporary, but his father did not give up and made Charles the heir of the entire land which was once Gaul and would eventually be France. At a diet near Crémieux in 837, Louis the Pious bade the nobles do homage to Charles as his heir. This led to the final rising of his sons against him and Pepin of Aquitaine died in 838, whereupon Charles received that kingdom, finally once and for all. Pepin's son Pepin II would be a perpetual thorn in his side.

The death of the emperor in 840 led to the outbreak of war between his sons. Charles allied himself with his brother Louis the German to resist the pretensions of the new emperor Lothair I, and the two allies defeated Lothair at the Battle of Fontenay-en-Puisaye on 25 June 841. In the following year, the two brothers confirmed their alliance by the celebrated Oaths of Strasbourg. The war was brought to an end by the Treaty of Verdun in August 843. The settlement gave Charles the Bald the kingdom of the West Franks, which he had been up till then governing and which practically corresponded with what is now France, as far as the Meuse, the Saône, and the Rhône, with the addition of the Spanish March as far as the Ebro. Louis received the eastern part of the Carolingian Empire, known as the East Francia and later Germany. Lothair retained the imperial title and the kingdom of Italy. He also received the central regions from Flanders through the Rhineland and Burgundy as king of Middle Francia.

Reign in the West

The first years of Charles's reign, up to the death of Lothair I in 855, were comparatively peaceful. During these years the three brothers continued the system of "confraternal government", meeting repeatedly with one another, at Koblenz (848), at Meerssen (851), and at Attigny (854). In 858, Louis the German, invited by disaffected nobles eager to oust Charles, invaded the West Frankish kingdom. Charles was so unpopular that he was unable to summon an army, and he fled to Burgundy. He was saved only by the support of the bishops, who refused to crown Louis the German king, and by the fidelity of the Welfs, who were related to his mother, Judith. In 860, he in his turn tried to seize the kingdom of his nephew, Charles of Provence, but was repulsed. On the death of his nephew Lothair II in 869, Charles tried to seize Lothair's dominions, but by the Treaty of Mersen (870) was compelled to share them with Louis the German.

Besides these family disputes, Charles had to struggle against repeated rebellions in Aquitaine and against the Bretons. Led by their chiefs Nomenoë and Erispoë, who defeated the king at the Battle of Ballon (845) and the Battle of Jengland (851), the Bretons were successful in obtaining a de facto independence. Charles also fought against the Vikings, who devastated the country of the north, the valleys of the Seine and Loire, and even up to the borders of Aquitaine. Several times Charles was forced to purchase their retreat at a heavy price. Charles led various expeditions against the invaders and, by the Edict of Pistres of 864, made the army more mobile by providing for a cavalry element, the predecessor of the French chivalry so famous during the next 600 years. By the same edict, he ordered fortified bridges to be put up at all rivers to block the Viking incursions. Two of these bridges at Paris saved the city during its siege of 885-886.

Reign as emperor

In 875, after the death of the Emperor Louis II (son of his half-brother Lothair), Charles the Bald, supported by Pope John VIII, traveled to Italy, receiving the royal crown at Pavia and the imperial insignia in Rome on 29 December. Louis the German, also a candidate for the succession of Louis II, revenged himself by invading and devastating Charles' dominions, and Charles had to return hastily to Francia. After the death of Louis the German (28 August 876), Charles in his turn attempted to seize Louis's kingdom, but was decisively beaten at Andernach on 8 October 876.

In the meantime, John VIII, menaced by the Saracens, was urging Charles to come to his defence in Italy. Charles again crossed the Alps, but this expedition was received with little enthusiasm by the nobles, and even by his regent in Lombardy, Boso, and they refused to join his army. At the same time Carloman, son of Louis the German, entered northern Italy. Charles, ill and in great distress, started on his way back to Gaul, but died while crossing the pass of Mont Cenis at Brides-les-Bains, on 6 October 877.

According to the Annals of St-Bertin, Charles was hastily buried at the abbey of Nantua, Burgundy because the bearers were unable to withstand the stench of his decaying body. He was to have been buried in the Basilique Saint-Denis and may have been transferred there later. It was recorded that there was a memorial brass there that was melted down at the Revolution.

Charles was succeeded by his son, Louis. Charles was a prince of education and letters, a friend of the church, and conscious of the support he could find in the episcopate against his unruly nobles, for he chose his councillors from among the higher clergy, as in the case of Guenelon of Sens, who betrayed him, and of Hincmar of Reims.

Baldness

It has been suggested that Charles' nickname was used ironically and not descriptively; i.e. that he was not in fact bald, but rather that he was extremely hairy. In support of this idea is the fact that none of his enemies commented on what would be an easy target. However, none of the voluble members of his court comments on his being hairy; and the Genealogy of Frankish Kings, a text from Fontanelle dating from possibly as early as 869, and a text without a trace of irony, names him as Karolus Caluus ("Charles the Bald"). Certainly, by the end of the 10th century, Richier of Reims and Adhemar of Chabannes refer to him in all seriousness as "Charles the Bald".

An alternative or additional interpretation is based on Charles' initial lack of a regnum. "Bald" would in this case be a tongue-in-cheek reference to his landlessness, at an age where his brothers already had been sub-kings for some years.

Marriages and children

Charles married Ermentrude, daughter of Odo I, Count of Orléans, in 842. She died in 869. In 870, Charles married Richilde of Provence, who was descended from a noble family of Lorraine.

With Ermentrude:

Judith (844-870), married firstly with Ethelwulf of Wessex, secondly with Ethelbald of Wessex (her stepson) and thirdly with Baldwin I of Flanders
Louis the Stammerer (846-879)
Charles the Child (847-866)
Lothar (848-865), monk in 861, became Abbot of Saint-Germain
Carloman (849-876)
Rotrud (852-912), a nun, Abbess of Saint-Radegunde
Ermentrud (854-877), a nun, Abbess of Hasnon
Hildegard (born 856, died young)
Gisela (857-874)

With Richilde:

Rothild (871-929), married firstly to Hugues, Count of Bourges and secondly to Roger, Count of Maine
Drogo (872-873)
Pippin (873-874)
a son (born and died 875)
Charles (876-877)

Charles married Richilde of Provence 22 Jan 869/70, Aix-la-Chapelle, France. Richilde (daughter of Bivin of Gorze and Richildis) was born Abt 845; died 02 Jun 910, Provence, France. [Group Sheet]

1. Rothilde was born 871; died 929.

Charles married Ermentrude d'Orléans 842. Ermentrude (daughter of Odo, Comte de Orléans and Ergetrude) was born 27 Sep 823; died 06 Oct 869; was buried Paris, Île-de-France, France. [Group Sheet]

1. Judith of Flanders was born Between 843 and 844; died Abt 870.
2. Charles, Roi d'Aquitaine died 866.
3. Carloman died 876.
4. Louis II The Stammerer, King of the Franks was born 07 Nov 846; died 10 Apr 879, Compiegn, France.

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Louis the Pious (778 - 20 June 840), also called the Fair, and the Debonaire, was the King of Aquitaine from 781. He was also King of the Franks and co-Emperor (as Louis I) with his father, Charlemagne, from 813. As the only surviving adult son of Charlemagne and Hildegard, he became the sole ruler of the Franks after his father's death in 814, a position which he held until his death, save for the period 833-34, during which he was deposed.

During his reign in Aquitaine, Louis was charged with the defence of the Empire's southwestern frontier. He conquered Barcelona from the Muslims in 801 and asserted Frankish authority over Pamplona and the Basques south of the Pyrenees in 812. As emperor he included his adult sons, Lothair, Pepin, and Louis, in the government and sought to establish a suitable division of the realm among them. The first decade of his reign was characterised by several tragedies and embarrassments, notably the brutal treatment of his nephew Bernard of Italy, for which Louis atoned in a public act of self-debasement. In the 830s his empire was torn by civil war between his sons, only exacerbated by Louis's attempts to include his son Charles by his second wife in the succession plans. Though his reign ended on a high note, with order largely restored to his empire, it was followed by three years of civil war. Louis is generally compared unfavourably to his father, though the problems he faced were of a distinctly different sort.

Birth and rule in Aquitaine

Louis was born while his father Charlemagne was on campaign in Spain, at the Carolingian villa of Cassinogilum, according to Einhard and the anonymous chronicler called Astronomus; the place is usually identified with Chasseneuil, near Poitiers. He was the third son of Charlemagne by his wife Hildegard.

Louis was crowned King of Aquitaine as a child in 781 and sent there with regents and a court. Charlemagne constituted the sub-kingdom in order to secure the border of his kingdom after the destructive war against the Aquitanians and Basques under Waifer (capitulated c. 768) and later Hunald II, which culminated in the disastrous Battle of Roncesvalles (778). Charlemagne wanted his son Louis to grow up in the area where he was to reign. However, in 785, wary of the customs his son may have been taking in Aquitaine, Charlemagne sent for him to Aquitaine and Louis presented himself at the Royal Council of Paderborn dressed up in Basque costumes along with other youths in the same garment, which may have made a good impression in Toulouse, since the Basques of Vasconia were a mainstay of the Aquitanian army.

In 794, Charlemagne settled four former Gallo-Roman villas on Louis, in the thought that he would take in each in turn as winter residence: Doué-la-Fontaine in today's Anjou, Ebreuil in Allier, Angeac-Charente, and the disputed Cassinogilum. Charlemagne's intention was to see all his sons brought up as natives of their given territories, wearing the national costume of the region and ruling by the local customs. Thus were the children sent to their respective realms at so young an age. Each kingdom had its importance in keeping some frontier, Louis's was the Spanish March. In 797, Barcelona, the greatest city of the Marca, fell to the Franks when Zeid, its governor, rebelled against Córdoba and, failing, handed it to them. The Umayyad authority recaptured it in 799. However, Louis marched the entire army of his kingdom, including Gascons with their duke Sancho I of Gascony, Provençals under Leibulf, and Goths under Bera, over the Pyrenees and besieged it for two years, wintering there from 800 to 801, when it capitulated. The sons were not given independence from central authority, however, and Charlemagne ingrained in them the concepts of empire and unity by sending them on military expeditions far from their home bases. Louis campaigned in the Italian Mezzogiorno against the Beneventans at least once.

Louis was one of Charlemagne's three legitimate sons to survive infancy, including his twin brother, Lothair. According to Frankish custom, Louis had expected to share his inheritance with his brothers, Charles the Younger, King of Neustria, and Pepin, King of Italy. In the Divisio Regnorum of 806, Charlemagne had slated Charles the Younger as his successor as emperor and chief king, ruling over the Frankish heartland of Neustria and Austrasia, while giving Pepin the Iron Crown of Lombardy, which Charlemagne possessed by conquest. To Louis's kingdom of Aquitaine, he added Septimania, Provence, and part of Burgundy.

But in the event, Charlemagne's other legitimate sons died - Pepin in 810 and Charles in 811 - and Louis alone remained to be crowned co-emperor with Charlemagne in 813. On his father's death in 814, he inherited the entire Frankish kingdom and all its possessions (with the sole exception of Italy, which remained within Louis's empire, but under the direct rule of Bernard, Pepin's son).

Emperor

He was in his villa of Doué-la-Fontaine, Anjou, when he received news of his father's passing. Hurrying to Aachen, he crowned himself and was proclaimed by the nobles with shouts of Vivat Imperator Ludovicus.

In his first coinage type, minted from the start of his reign, he imitated his father Charlemagne's portrait coinage, giving an image of imperial power and prestige in an echo of Roman glory.[3] He quickly enacted a "moral purge", in which he sent all of his unmarried sisters to nunneries, forgoing their diplomatic use as hostage brides in favour of the security of avoiding the entanglements that powerful brothers-in-law might bring. He spared his illegitimate half-brothers and tonsured his father's cousins, Adalard and Wala, shutting them up in Noirmoutier and Corbie, respectively, despite the latter's initial loyalty.

His chief counsellors were Bernard, margrave of Septimania, and Ebbo, Archbishop of Reims. The latter, born a serf, was raised by Louis to that office, but ungratefully betrayed him later. He retained some of his father's ministers, such as Elisachar, abbot of St. Maximin near Trier, and Hildebold, Archbishop of Cologne. Later he replaced Elisachar with Hildwin, abbot of many monasteries.

He also employed Benedict of Aniane (the Second Benedict), a Septimanian Visigoth and monastic founder, to help him reform the Frankish church. One of Benedict's primary reforms was to ensure that all religious houses in Louis' realm adhered to the Rule of Saint Benedict, named for its creator, Benedict of Nursia (480-550), the First Benedict.

In 816, Pope Stephen IV, who had succeeded Leo III, visited Reims and again crowned Louis. The Emperor thereby strengthened the papacy by recognising the importance of the pope in imperial coronations.

Ordinatio imperii

On Maundy Thursday 817, Louis and his court were crossing a wooden gallery from the cathedral to the palace in Aachen when the gallery collapsed, killing many. Louis, having barely survived and feeling the imminent danger of death, began planning for his succession; three months later he issued an Ordinatio Imperii, an imperial decree that laid out plans for an orderly succession. In 815, he had already given his two eldest sons a share in the government, when he had sent his elder sons Lothair and Pepin to govern Bavaria and Aquitaine respectively, though without the royal titles. Now, he proceeded to divide the empire among his three sons and his nephew Bernard of Italy:

Lothair was proclaimed and crowned co-emperor in Aix-la-Chapelle by his father. He was promised the succession to most of the Frankish dominions (excluding the exceptions below), and would be the overlord of his brothers and cousin.
Bernard, the son of Charlemagne's son Pippin of Italy, was confirmed as King of Italy, a title he had been allowed to inherit from his father by Charlemagne.
Pepin was proclaimed King of Aquitaine, his territory including Gascony, the march around Toulouse, and the counties of Carcassonne, Autun, Avallon and Nevers.
Louis, the youngest son, was proclaimed King of Bavaria and the neighbouring marches.

If one of the subordinate kings died, he was to be succeeded by his sons. If he died childless, Lothair would inherit his kingdom. In the event of Lothair dying without sons, one of Louis the Pious' younger sons would be chosen to replace him by "the people". Above all, the Empire would not be divided: the Emperor would rule supreme over the subordinate kings, whose obedience to him was mandatory.

With this settlement, Louis tried to combine his sense for the Empire's unity, supported by the clergy, while at the same time providing positions for all of his sons. Instead of treating his sons equally in status and land, he elevated his first-born son Lothair above his younger brothers and gave him the largest part of the Empire as his share.

Bernard's rebellion and Louis's penance

The ordinatio imperii of Aachen left Bernard of Italy in an uncertain and subordinate position as king of Italy, and he began plotting to declare independence upon hearing of it. Louis immediately directed his army towards Italy, and betook himself to Chalon-sur-Saône. Intimidated by the emperor's swift action, Bernard met his uncle at Chalon, under invitation, and surrendered. He was taken to Aix-la-Chapelle by Louis, who there had him tried and condemned to death for treason. Louis had the sentence commuted to blinding, which was duly carried out; Bernard did not survive the ordeal, however, dying after two days of agony. Others also suffered: Theodulf of Orléans, in eclipse since the death of Charlemagne, was accused of having supported the rebellion, and was thrown into a monastic prison, where he died soon after - poisoned, it was rumoured.[4] The fate of his nephew deeply marked Louis's conscience for the rest of his life.

In 822, as a deeply religious man, Louis performed penance for causing Bernard's death, at his palace of Attigny near Vouziers in the Ardennes, before Pope Paschal I, and a council of ecclesiastics and nobles of the realm that had been convened for the reconciliation of Louis with his three younger half-brothers, Hugo whom he soon made abbot of St-Quentin, Drogo whom he soon made Bishop of Metz, and Theodoric. This act of contrition, partly in emulation of Theodosius I, had the effect of greatly reducing his prestige as a Frankish ruler, for he also recited a list of minor offences about which no secular ruler of the time would have taken any notice. He also made the egregious error of releasing Wala and Adalard from their monastic confinements, placing the former in a position of power in the court of Lothair and the latter in a position in his own house.

Frontier wars

At the start of Louis's reign, the many tribes - Danes, Obotrites, Slovenes, Bretons, Basques - which inhabited his frontierlands were still in awe of the Frankish emperor's power and dared not stir up any trouble. In 816, however, the Sorbs rebelled and were quickly followed by Slavomir, chief of the Obotrites, who was captured and abandoned by his own people, being replaced by Ceadrag in 818. Soon, Ceadrag too had turned against the Franks and allied with the Danes, who were to become the greatest menace of the Franks in a short time.

A greater Slavic menace was gathering on the southeast. There, Ljudevit Posavski, duke of Pannonia, was harassing the border at the Drava and Sava rivers. The margrave of Friuli, Cadolah, was sent out against him, but he died on campaign and, in 820, his margarvate was invaded by Slovenes. In 821, an alliance was made with Borna, duke of the Dalmatia, and Ljudevit was brought to heel. In 824 several Slav tribes in the north-western parts of Bulgaria acknowledged Louis's suzerainity and after he was reluctant to settle the matter peacefully with the Bulgarian ruler Omurtag, in 827 the Bulgarians attacked the Franks in Pannonia and regained their lands.

On the far southern edge of his great realm, Louis had to control the Lombard princes of Benevento whom Charlemagne had never subjugated. He extracted promises from Princes Grimoald IV and Sico, but to no effect.

On the southwestern frontier, problems commenced early when c. 812, Louis the Pious crossed the western Pyrenees 'to settle matters' in Pamplona. The expedition made its way back north, where it narrowly escaped an ambush attempt arranged by the Basques in the pass of Roncevaux thanks to the precautions he took, i.e. hostages. Séguin, duke of Gascony, was then deposed by Louis in 816, possibly for failing to suppress or collaborating with the Basque revolt south of the western Pyrenees, so sparking off a Basque uprising that was duly put down by the Frankish emperor in Dax. Seguin was replaced by Lupus III, who was dispossessed in 818 by the emperor. In 820 an assembly at Quierzy-sur-Oise decided to send an expedition against the Cordoban caliphate (827). The counts in charge of the army, Hugh, count of Tours, and Matfrid, count of Orléans, were slow in acting and the expedition came to naught.

First civil war

In 818, as Louis was returning from a campaign to Brittany, he was greeted by news of the death of his wife, Ermengarde. Ermengarde was the daughter of Ingerman, the duke of Hesbaye. Louis had been close to his wife, who had been involved in policymaking. It was rumoured that she had played a part in her nephew's death and Louis himself believed her own death was divine retribution for that event. It took many months for his courtiers and advisors to convince him to remarry, but eventually he did, in 820, to Judith, daughter of Welf, count of Altdorf. In 823 Judith gave birth to a son, who was named Charles.

The birth of this son damaged the Partition of Aachen, as Louis's attempts to provide for his fourth son met with stiff resistance from his older sons, and the last two decades of his reign were marked by civil war.

At Worms in 829, Louis gave Charles Alemannia with the title of king or duke (historians differ on this), thus enraging his son and co-emperor Lothair,[5] whose promised share was thereby diminished. An insurrection was soon at hand. With the urging of the vengeful Wala and the cooperation of his brothers, Lothair accused Judith of having committed adultery with Bernard of Septimania, even suggesting Bernard to be the true father of Charles. Ebbo and Hildwin abandoned the emperor at that point, Bernard having risen to greater heights than either of them. Agobard, Archbishop of Lyon, and Jesse, bishop of Amiens, too, opposed the redivision of the empire and lent their episcopal prestige to the rebels.

In 830, at Wala's insistence that Bernard of Septimania was plotting against him, Pepin of Aquitaine led an army of Gascons, with the support of the Neustrian magnates, all the way to Paris. At Verberie, Louis the German joined him. At that time, the emperor returned from another campaign in Brittany to find his empire at war with itself. He marched as far as Compiègne, an ancient royal town, before being surrounded by Pepin's forces and captured. Judith was incarcerated at Poitiers and Bernard fled to Barcelona.

Then Lothair finally set out with a large Lombard army, but Louis had promised his sons Louis the German and Pepin of Aquitaine greater shares of the inheritance, prompting them to shift loyalties in favour of their father. When Lothair tried to call a general council of the realm in Nijmegen, in the heart of Austrasia, the Austrasians and Rhinelanders came with a following of armed retainers, and the disloyal sons were forced to free their father and bow at his feet (831). Lothair was pardoned, but disgraced and banished to Italy. Pepin returned to Aquitaine and Judith - after being forced to humiliate herself with a solemn oath of innocence - to Louis's court. Only Wala was severely dealt with, making his way to a secluded monastery on the shores of Lake Geneva. Though Hilduin, abbot of Saint Denis, was exiled to Paderborn and Elisachar and Matfrid were deprived of their honours north of the Alps; they did not lose their freedom.

Second civil war

The next revolt occurred a mere two years later (832). The disaffected Pepin was summoned to his father's court, where he was so poorly received he left against his father's orders. Immediately, fearing that Pepin would be stirred up to revolt by his nobles and desiring to reform his morals, Louis the Pious summoned all his forces to meet in Aquitaine in preparation of an uprising, but Louis the German garnered an army of Slav allies and conquered Swabia before the emperor could react. Once again the elder Louis divided his vast realm. At Jonac, he declared Charles king of Aquitaine and deprived Pepin (he was less harsh with the younger Louis), restoring the whole rest of the empire to Lothair, not yet involved in the civil war. Lothair was, however, interested in usurping his father's authority. His ministers had been in contact with Pepin and may have convinced him and Louis the German to rebel, promising him Alemannia, the kingdom of Charles.

Soon Lothair, with the support of Pope Gregory IV, whom he had confirmed in office without his father's support, joined the revolt in 833. While Louis was at Worms gathering a new force, Lothair marched north. Louis marched south. The armies met on the plains of the Rothfeld. There, Gregory met the emperor and may have tried to sow dissension amongst his ranks. Soon much of Louis's army had evaporated before his eyes, and he ordered his few remaining followers to go, because "it would be a pity if any man lost his life or limb on my account." The resigned emperor was taken to Saint Médard at Soissons, his son Charles to Prüm, and the queen to Tortona. The despicable show of disloyalty and disingenuousness earned the site the name Field of Lies, or Lügenfeld, or Campus Mendacii, ubi plurimorum fidelitas exstincta est

On 13 November 833, Ebbo of Rheims presided over a synod in the Church of Saint Mary in Soissons which deposed Louis and forced him to publicly confess many crimes, none of which he had, in fact, committed. In return, Lothair gave Ebbo the Abbey of Saint Vaast. Men like Rabanus Maurus, Louis' younger half-brothers Drogo and Hugh, and Emma, Judith's sister and Louis the German's new wife, worked on the younger Louis to make peace with his father, for the sake of unity of the empire. The humiliation to which Louis was then subjected at Notre Dame in Compiègne turned the loyal barons of Austrasia and Saxony against Lothair, and the usurper fled to Burgundy, skirmishing with loyalists near Chalon-sur-Saône. Louis was restored the next year, on 1 March 834.

On Lothair's return to Italy, Wala, Jesse, and Matfrid, formerly count of Orléans, died of a pestilence and, on 2 February 835, the Synod of Thionville deposed Ebbo, Agobard, Bernard, Bishop of Vienne, and Bartholomew, Archbishop of Narbonne. Lothair himself fell ill; events had turned completely in Louis favour once again.

In 836, however, the family made peace and Louis restored Pepin and Louis, deprived Lothair of all save Italy, and gave it to Charles in a new division, given at the diet of Crémieu. At about that time, the Vikings terrorised and sacked Utrecht and Antwerp. In 837, they went up the Rhine as far as Nijmegen, and their king, Rorik, demanded the wergild of some of his followers killed on previous expeditions before Louis the Pious mustered a massive force and marched against them. They fled, but it would not be the last time they harried the northern coasts. In 838, they even claimed sovereignty over Frisia, but a treaty was confirmed between them and the Franks in 839. Louis the Pious ordered the construction of a North Sea fleet and the sending of missi dominici into Frisia to establish Frankish sovereignty there.

Third civil war

In 837, Louis crowned Charles king over all of Alemannia and Burgundy and gave him a portion of his brother Louis' land. Louis the German promptly rose in revolt, and the emperor redivided his realm again at Quierzy-sur-Oise, giving all of the young king of Bavaria's lands, save Bavaria itself, to Charles. Emperor Louis did not stop there, however. His devotion to Charles knew no bounds. When Pepin died in 838, Louis declared Charles the new king of Aquitaine. The nobles, however, elected Pepin's son Pepin II. When Louis threatened invasion, the third great civil war of his reign broke out. In the spring of 839, Louis the German invaded Swabia, Pepin II and his Gascon subjects fought all the way to the Loire, and the Danes returned to ravage the Frisian coast (sacking Dorstad for a second time).

Lothair, for the first time in a long time, allied with his father and pledged support at Worms in exchange for a redivision of the inheritance. By a final placitum issued there, Louis gave Bavaria to Louis the German and disinherited Pepin II, leaving the entire remainder of the empire to be divided roughly into an eastern part and a western. Lothair was given the choice of which partition he would inherit and he chose the eastern, including Italy, leaving the western for Charles. The emperor quickly subjugated Aquitaine and had Charles recognised by the nobles and clergy at Clermont-en-Auvergne in 840. Louis then, in a final flash of glory, rushed into Bavaria and forced the younger Louis into the Ostmark. The empire now settled as he had declared it at Worms, he returned in July to Frankfurt am Main, where he disbanded the army. The final civil war of his reign was over.

Death

Louis fell ill soon after his final victorious campaigns and went to his summer hunting lodge on an island in the Rhine, by his palace at Ingelheim. On 20 June 840, he died, in the presence of many bishops and clerics and in the arms of his half-brother Drogo, though Charles and Judith were absent in Poitiers. Soon dispute plunged the surviving brothers into a civil war that was only settled in 843 by the Treaty of Verdun, which split the Frankish realm into three parts, to become the kernels of France and Germany, with Burgundy and the Low Countries between them. The dispute over the kingship of Aquitaine was not fully settled until 860.

Louis, along with his half-brother Drogo, was buried in the church of Saint-Pierre-aux-Nonnains in Metz.

Marriage and issue

By his first wife, Ermengarde of Hesbaye (married ca 794-98), he had three sons and three daughters:

Lothair (795-855), king of Middle Francia
Pepin (797-838), king of Aquitaine
Adelaide (b. c. 799)
Rotrude (b. 800), married Gerard
Hildegard (or Matilda) (b. c. 802), married Gerard, Count of Auvergne
Louis the German (c. 805-875), king of East Francia

By his second wife, Judith of Bavaria, he had a daughter and a son:

Gisela, married Eberhard I of Friuli
Charles the Bald, king of West Francia

By Theodelinde of Sens, he had two illegitimate children:

Arnulf of Sens
Alpais

Louis married Judith of Bavaria Feb 818/19, Aix-la-Chapelle, France. Judith (daughter of Welf, I of Altorf and Hedwig) was born Abt 800, Altdorf, Bayern, Germany; died 19 Apr 843, Tours, France; was buried Tours, France. [Group Sheet]

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Queen Judith (or Iudit) (805 - 19 or 23 April 843), also known as Judith of Bavaria, was the daughter of Count Welf and a Saxon noblewoman named Hedwig, Duchess of Bavaria (780-826). She became Queen consort of the Franks.

Marriage and issue

She became the second wife of Louis the Pious, Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Franks; they married in Aachen in 819 and had the following children:

Gisela (820 - 5 July 874), married Eberhard of Friuli
Charles the Bald

Impact on the Frankish kingdom

Judith ensured that her son Charles received a share of the kingdom, just like his three half-brothers from Louis' first marriage. This contributed to the ensuing civil war among Louis and his sons. Rebels temporarily imprisoned Judith in the convent of Poitiers on allegations of adultery during 830. From 833 to 834, she was exiled in Tortona.

Judith was the first member of the Elder House of Welf to have a leading role in the Frankish kingdom. Whether by coincidence or through Judith's influence, in the years following her marriage to Louis her mother and both of her brothers gained important offices in the kingdom. Her sister Hemma married Louis the German, a son of Louis the Pious from his first marriage, in 827. Judith was buried at the basilica of St. Martin in Tours.

Other Events:

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Notes:

Charlemagne, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was born on 2 April 742 at Aachen, Germany. He was the son of Pepin III, King of the Franks and Bertha de Laon. He married, firstly, Desideria in 770. He married Hildegard of Vinzgau, daughter of Gerold I, Count of Vinzgau and Imma of Swabia, circa 772 in a Aix-la-Chapelle, France marriage. He married, thirdly, Fastrada in 784. He married, fourthly, Luitgard in 794. He died on 28 January 814 at age 71 at Aachen, Germany. He was buried at Aachen, Germany.

Charlemagne, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire also went by the nick-name of Charlemagne 'the Great'. He gained the title of King Charlemagne of the Franks in 768. He gained the title of Emperor Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire on 25 December 800.

Charlemagne c. 742 - 28 January 814), also known as Charles the Great (Latin: Carolus Magnus or Karolus Magnus), was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans (Imperator Romanorum) from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800.

His rule is also associated with the Carolingian Renaissance, a revival of art, religion, and culture through the medium of the Catholic Church. Through his foreign conquests and internal reforms, Charlemagne helped define both Western Europe and the European Middle Ages. He is numbered as Charles I in the regnal lists of Germany, the Holy Roman Empire, and France.

The son of King Pepin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, a Frankish queen, he succeeded his father in 768 and was initially co-ruler with his brother Carloman I. It has often been suggested that the relationship between Charlemagne and Carloman was not good, but it has also been argued that tensions were exaggerated by Carolingian chroniclers.

Nevertheless further conflict was prevented by the sudden death of Carloman in 771, in unexplained circumstances. Charlemagne continued the policy of his father towards the papacy and became its protector, removing the Lombards from power in Italy, and leading an incursion into Muslim Spain, to which he was invited by the Muslim governor of Barcelona. Charlemagne was promised several Iberian cities in return for giving military aid to the governor; however, the deal was withdrawn.

Subsequently, Charlemagne's retreating army experienced its worst defeat at the hands of the Basques, at the Battle of Roncesvalles (778) (memorialised, although heavily fictionalised, in the Song of Roland). He also campaigned against the peoples to his east, especially the Saxons, and after a protracted war subjected them to his rule. By forcibly Christianizing the Saxons and banning on penalty of death their native Germanic paganism, he integrated them into his realm and thus paved the way for the later Ottonian dynasty.

The French and German monarchies descending from the empire ruled by Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor cover most of Europe. In his acceptance speech of the Charlemagne Prize Pope John Paul II referred to him as the Pater Europae ("father of Europe"): his empire united most of Western Europe for the first time since the Romans, and the Carolingian renaissance encouraged the formation of a common European identity.

Political background

By the 6th century, the West Germanic Franks had been Christianised and Francia, ruled by the Merovingians, was the most powerful of the kingdoms that succeeded the Western Roman Empire. But following the Battle of Tertry, the Merovingians declined into a state of powerlessness, for which they have been dubbed the do-nothing kings (rois fainéants). Almost all government powers of any consequence were exercised by their chief officer, the mayor of the palace or major domus.

In 687, Pippin of Herstal, mayor of the palace of Austrasia, ended the strife between various kings and their mayors with his victory at Tertry and became the sole governor of the entire Frankish kingdom. Pippin himself was the grandson of two of the most important figures of the Austrasian Kingdom, Saint Arnulf of Metz and Pippin of Landen. Pippin the Middle was eventually succeeded by his illegitimate son Charles, later known as Charles Martel (the Hammer).

After 737, Charles governed the Franks without a king on the throne but declined to call himself "king". Charles was succeeded in 741 by his sons Carloman and Pepin the Short, the father of Charlemagne. To curb separatism in the periphery of the realm, in 743 the brothers placed on the throne Childeric III, who was to be the last Merovingian king.

After Carloman resigned office in 746 to enter the church by preference as a monk, Pepin brought the question of the kingship before Pope Zachary, asking whether it was good for a king to have no royal power. The pope handed down his decision in 749. He decreed (mandavit) that it was better for Pepin, who had the powers of high office as Mayor, to be called king, so as not to confuse the hierarchy (ordo). He therefore ordered him (iussit) to become "true king."

In 750, Pepin was elected by an assembly of the Franks, anointed by the archbishop and then raised (elevatus) to the office of king. Branding Childeric III as "the false king," the Pope ordered him into a monastery. Thus was the Merovingian dynasty replaced by the Carolingian dynasty, named after Pepin's father, Charles Martel.

In 753 Pope Stephen II fled from Italy to Francia appealing for assistance pro iustitiis sancti Petri ("for the rights of St. Peter") to Pepin. He was supported in this appeal by Carloman, Charles' brother. In return the pope could only provide legitimacy, which he did by again anointing and confirming Pepin, this time adding his young sons, Carolus and Carloman, to the royal patrimony, now heirs to the great realm that already covered most of western and central Europe. In 754 Pepin accepted the Pope's invitation to visit Italy on behalf of St. Peter's rights, dealing successfully with the Lombards.

Under the Carolingians, the Frankish kingdom spread to encompass an area including most of Western Europe. The division of that kingdom formed France and Germany; and the religious, political, and artistic evolutions originating from a centrally positioned Francia made a defining imprint on the whole of Europe.

Personal background

Ancestry

Charlemagne was the eldest child of Pepin the Short (714 - 24 September 768, reigned from 751) and his wife Bertrada of Laon (720 - 12 July 783), daughter of Caribert of Laon and Bertrada of Cologne. Records name only Carloman, Gisela, and a short-lived child named Pippin as his younger siblings. The semi-mythical Redburga, wife of King Egbert of Wessex, is sometimes claimed to be his sister (or sister-in-law or niece).

Date of birth

The most likely date of Charlemagne's birth is reconstructed from a number of sources. A date of 742 calculated from Einhard's date of death as January 814 at age 72 suffers from the defect of being two years before his parents' marriage in 744. The year given in the Annales Petaviani as 747 would be more likely, except that it contradicts Einhard and a few other sources in making Charlemagne less than a septuagenarian at his death. A month and day of April 2 is established by a calendar from Lorsch Abbey.

In 747 that day fell on Easter, a coincidence that would have been remembered but was not. If Easter was being used as the beginning of the calendar year, then 2 April 747 could have been, by modern reckoning, 2 April 748 (not an Easter). The date favored by the preponderance of evidence is 2 April 742, based on the septuagenarian age at death.[8] This date would appear to support an initial illegitimacy of birth, which is not, however, mentioned by Einhard.

Place of birth

Charlemagne was most likely born in Herstal, Wallonia, where his father was born, a town close to Liège in modern day Belgium. The Merovingians had a number of hunting villas in the vicinity. Liège is close to the region from where both the Merovingian and Carolingian families originated. He went to live in his father's villa in Jupille when he was around seven, which caused Jupille to be listed as a possible place of birth in almost every history book. Other cities have been suggested, including Aachen, Düren, Gauting, Mürlenbach, and Prüm. No definitive evidence as to which is the right candidate exists.

Name

Dubbed Charles le Magne, "Charles the Great," by subsequent Old French historians, becoming Charlemagne in English after the Norman conquest of England, he was named Karl (Carolus) after his grandfather, Charles Martel. Carolus Magnus was universal, leading to numerous translations in many languages of Europe: German Karl der Grosse, Dutch Karel de Grote, Danish Karl den Store, Italian Carlo Magno, Hungarian Nagy Károly, Polish Karol Wielki, Czech Karel Veliký, Russian Karl Velikij, and so on.

According to Julius Pokorny, the historical linguist and Indo-Europeanist, the root meaning of Karl is "old man", from Indo-European *ger-, where the g is a palatal consonant, meaning "to rub; to be old; grain." An old man has been worn away and is now grey with age.

"Old man" descended into words with different senses. In all the reflex languages a husband is "the old man" or in feminine form "the old lady". He can be an "old fool" as in English churl or a "sad case" as in Persian zar, but in the Germanic languages he becomes something more exalted. Old Norse Karl, Old English Ceorl, Old High German karel is a free man, a citizen, not a slave or an alien. As far as the civilizations established in imitation of classical city-states are concerned, such as the Roman, which had its senatus, "the old men," Karl means respected senior, similar to the English vernacular for a commander, "the old man." The common Germanic was *karilaz, on which the Latin Carolus, English Charles, is based.

Regardless of its previously understood meaning, Charles' achievements altered the meaning of the word. In many European languages, the very word for "king" derives from his name; e.g., Polish: król, Czech: král, Slovak: král, Hungarian: király, Lithuanian: karalius, Latvian: karalis, Croatian: kralj, Turkish: kral. This development parallels that of the name of the Caesars in the original Roman Empire, which became Kaiser and Czar, among others.

Language

By Charlemagne's time the French vernacular had already diverged significantly from Latin. This is evidenced by one of the regulations of the Council of Tours (813), which required that the parish priests preach either in the "rusticam Romanam linguam" (Romance) or "Theotiscam" (the Germanic vernacular) rather than in Latin. The goal of this rule was to make the sermons comprehensible to the common people, who must therefore have been either Romance speakers or Germanic speakers. Charlemagne himself probably spoke a Rhenish Franconian dialect of Old High German.

Apart from his native language he also spoke Latin "as well as his native tongue" and understood a bit of Greek, according to his biographer Einhard (Grecam vero melius intellegere quam pronuntiare poterat, "he could understand Greek better than he could speak it"). Einhard also writes that Charlemagne started a "grammar of his native language" and "gave the months names in his own tongue". All of his daughters received Old High German names.

The largely fictional account of Charlemagne’s Iberian campaigns by Pseudo-Turpin, written some three centuries after his death, gave rise to the legend that the king also spoke Arabic.

Appearance

Charlemagne's personal appearance is known from a good description by a personal associate, Einhard, author after his death of the biography Vita Karoli Magni. Einhard tells in his twenty-second chapter:

"He was heavily built, sturdy, and of considerable stature, although not exceptionally so, since his height was seven times the length of his own foot. He had a round head, large and lively eyes, a slightly larger nose than usual, white but still attractive hair, a bright and cheerful expression, a short and fat neck, and he enjoyed good health, except for the fevers that affected him in the last few years of his life. Toward the end, he dragged one leg. Even then, he stubbornly did what he wanted and refused to listen to doctors, indeed he detested them, because they wanted to persuade him to stop eating roast meat, as was his wont, and to be content with boiled meat."

The physical portrait provided by Einhard is confirmed by contemporary depictions of the emperor, such as coins and his 8-inch (20 cm) bronze statue kept in the Louvre. In 1861, Charlemagne's tomb was opened by scientists who reconstructed his skeleton and estimated it to be measured 74.9 in (190 cm). An estimate of his height from an X-ray and CT Scan of his tibia performed in 2010 is 1.84 m (72 in). This puts him in the 99th percentile of tall people of his period, given that average male height of his time was 1.69 m (67 in). The width of the bone suggested he was gracile but not robust in body build.

Dress

Charlemagne wore the traditional costume of the Frankish people, described by Einhard thus:

"He used to wear the national, that is to say, the Frank, dress-next his skin a linen shirt and linen breeches, and above these a tunic fringed with silk; while hose fastened by bands covered his lower limbs, and shoes his feet, and he protected his shoulders and chest in winter by a close-fitting coat of otter or marten skins."

He wore a blue cloak and always carried a sword with him. The typical sword was of a golden or silver hilt. He wore fancy jewelled swords to banquets or ambassadorial receptions. Nevertheless:[23]

"He despised foreign costumes, however handsome, and never allowed himself to be robed in them, except twice in Rome, when he donned the Roman tunic, chlamys, and shoes; the first time at the request of Pope Hadrian, the second to gratify Leo, Hadrian's successor."

He could rise to the occasion when necessary. On great feast days, he wore embroidery and jewels on his clothing and shoes. He had a golden buckle for his cloak on such occasions and would appear with his great diadem, but he despised such apparel, according to Einhard, and usually dressed like the common people.

Rise to power

Early life

Einhard says of the early life of Charles:

"It would be folly, I think, to write a word concerning Charles' birth and infancy, or even his boyhood, for nothing has ever been written on the subject, and there is no one alive now who can give information on it. Accordingly, I determined to pass that by as unknown, and to proceed at once to treat of his character, his deed, and such other facts of his life as are worth telling and setting forth, and shall first give an account of his deed at home and abroad, then of his character and pursuits, and lastly of his administration and death, omitting nothing worth knowing or necessary to know."

The ambiguous high office

The most powerful officers of the Frankish people, the Mayor of the Palace (Maior Domus) and one or more kings (rex, reges) were appointed by election of the people; that is, no regular elections were held, but they were held as required to elect officers ad quos summa imperii pertinebat, "to whom the highest matters of state pertained." Evidently interim decisions could be made by the Pope, which ultimately needed to be ratified by an assembly of the people, which met once a year.

Before Pepin the Short, initially a Mayor, was elected king in 750, he held the high office "as though hereditary" (velut hereditario fungebatur). Einhard explains that "the honor" was usually "given by the people" to the distinguished, but Pepin and his brother Carloman received it as though hereditary, as did their father, Charles Martel. There was, however, a certain ambiguity about quasi-inheritance. The office was treated as joint property: one Mayorship held by two brothers jointly. Each, however, had his own geographic jurisdiction. When Carloman decided to resign, becoming ultimately a Benedictine at Monte Cassino, the question of the disposition of his quasi-share was settled by the pope. He converted the Mayorship into a Kingship and awarded the joint property to Pepin, who now had the full right to pass it on by inheritance.

This decision was not accepted by all members of the family. Carloman had consented to the temporary tenancy of his own share, which he intended to pass on to his own son, Drogo, when the inheritance should be settled at someone's death. By the Pope's decision, in which Pepin had a hand, Drogo was to be disqualified as an heir in favor of his cousin Charles. He took up arms in opposition to the decision and was joined by Grifo, a half-brother of Pepin and Carloman, who had been given a share by Charles Martel, but was stripped of it and held under loose arrest by his half-brothers after an attempt to seize their shares by military action. By 753 all was over. Grifo perished in combat in the Battle of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne while Drogo was hunted down and taken into custody.

On the death of Pepin, September 24, 768, the kingship passed jointly to his sons, "with divine assent" (divino nutu). According to the Life, Pepin died in Paris. The Franks "in general assembly" (generali conventu) gave them both the rank of king (reges) but "partitioned the whole body of the kingdom equally" (totum regni corpus ex aequo partirentur). The annals[30] tell a slightly different version. The king died at St. Denis, which is, however, still in Paris. The two "lords" (domni) were "elevated to kingship" (elevati sunt in regnum), Carolus on October 9 in Noyon, Carloman on an unspecified date in Soissons. If born in 742, Carolus was 26 years old, but he had been campaigning at his father's right hand for several years, which may help to account for his military skill and genius. Carloman was 17.

The language in either case suggests that there were not two inheritances, which would have created distinct kings ruling over distinct kingdoms, but a single joint inheritance and a joint kingship tenanted by two equal kings, Charles and his brother Carloman. As before, distinct jurisdictions were awarded. Charles received Pepin's original share as Mayor: the outer parts of the kingdom, bordering on the sea, namely Neustria, western Aquitaine, and the northern parts of Austrasia, while Carloman was awarded his uncle's former share: the inner parts: southern Austrasia, Septimania, eastern Aquitaine, Burgundy, Provence, and Swabia, lands bordering on Italy. The question of whether these jurisdictions were joint shares reverting to the other brother if one brother died or were inherited property passed on to the descendants of the brother who died was never definitely settled by the Frankish people. It came up repeatedly over the succeeding decades until the grandsons of Charlemagne created distinct sovereign kingdoms.

Aquitanian rebellion

An inheritance in the countries formerly under Roman law (ius or iustitia) represented not only a transmission of the properties and privileges but also the encumbrances and obligations attached to the inheritance. Pepin at his death had been in process of building an empire, a difficult task:

"In those times, to build a kingdom from an aggregation of small states was itself no great difficulty .... But to keep the state intact after it had been formed was a colossal task .... Each of the minor states ... had its little sovereign ... who ... gave himself chiefly to ... plotting, pillaging and fighting."

Formation of a new Aquitania

Aquitania under Rome had been southern Gaul, which was Romanized and spoke a Romance language. Similarly Hispania had been populated by peoples speaking various languages, including Celtic, but was now populated entirely by Romance language speakers. Between Aquitania and Hispania were the Euskaldunak, Latinized to Vascones, or Basques, living in Basque country, Vasconia, which extended, according to the distributions of place names attributable to the Basques, most densely in the western Pyrenees but also as far south as the upper Ebro River in Spain and as far north as the Garonne River in France.[33] The French name, Gascony, derives from Vasconia. The Romans were never able to entirely subject Vasconia. The parts which they did, in which they placed the region's first cities, were sources of legions in the Roman army valued for their fighting abilities. The border with Aquitania was Toulouse.

The Romans after the fall of their empire were replaced by the Visigoths in Spain and the Franks and Visigoths to the north. Although they had the authority of state, these Germanic tribes were thinly settled at best. They did not keep their languages long but were assimilated to the Romance-speaking prior populations. Romance was still spoken in Toulouse and to the east as well as on the Ebro. These authorities maintained relationships with the Basques that were fully as combative as the previous had been; moreover, the Basques on the whole had the upper hand. They began to raid and pillage to the north and east of their borders into territory then ruled by the Merovingians. They took slaves from the north and sold them to the south. Army after army was sent by the Franks. If the Basques could not win they retreated into the mountains. In 635 a Frankish column under Arnebert was massacred in the Haute Soule, a mountain valley.

At about 660 the Duchy of Vasconia united with the Duchy of Aquitania to form a single kingdom under Felix of Aquitaine, governing from Toulouse. This was a joint kingship with a 28-year-old Basque king, Lupus I. The kingdom was sovereign and independent. On the one hand Vasconia gave up predation to become a player on the field of European politics. On the other, whatever arrangements Felix had made with the weak Merovingians were null and void. At his death in 770 the joint property of the kingship reverted entirely to Lupus. As the Basques had no law of joint inheritance, but practiced primogeniture, Lupus in effect founded a hereditary dynasty of Basque kings of an expanded Aquitania.

Acquisition of Aquitania by the Carolingians

The Latin chronicles on the end of Visigothic Hispania leave much to be desired: identification of characters, filling in the gaps and reconciliation of the numerous contradictions. The Saracen sources, however, present a more coherent view, such as the Ta'rikh iftitah al-Andalus ("History of the Conquest of al-Andalus") by Ibn al-Qu?iyya, "the son of the Gothic woman," meaning by the named woman Sarah, granddaughter of the last king of all Visigothic Spain, who married a Saracen. Ibn al-Qu?iyya, who had another, much longer name, must have been relying to some degree on family oral tradition.

According to Ibn al-Qu?iyya the last Visigothic king of a united Hispania died before his three sons: Almund, Romulo and Ardabast, reached majority. Their mother was regent at Toledo, but Roderic, army chief of staff, staged a rebellion, capturing Cordova. Of all the possible outcomes he chose to impose a joint rule over distinct jurisdictions on the true heirs. Evidence of a division of some sort can be found in the distribution of coins imprinted with the name of each king and in the king lists.[39] Wittiza is succeeded by Roderic, reigning 7.5 years, and a certain Achila (Aquila), reigning 3.5 years. If the reigns of both terminated with the incursion of the Saracens, then Roderic appears to have reigned a few years before the majority of Achila. The latter's kingdom is securely placed to the northeast, while Roderic seems to have taken the rest, notably Portugal.

Achila is undoubtedly Achila II of the coins and chronicles, who is stated by some chronicles to have been the son of Wittiza. How he fits into the Gothic woman's family tree is a problem, A scribal error in the transmission of her son's manuscript has been postulated: w.q.l.h for Waqla becomes r.m.l.h for Rumulu (Arabic like Hebrew writes only the consonants). Ardabast is generally identified with Ardo king of Septimania, 713-720. The location of the share of Almun, or Olemundo, has not survived, but that he had one is assured by subsequent events.

In the account, a Christian merchant, Julian, left his daughter in the guardianship of Roderic (her mother had just died) while he conducted some business on Roderic's request in North Africa. Returning to find his daughter had been seduced by Roderic he simulated nonchalence and acceptance of that event, convincing Roderic to send him back on more business. Arriving there, however, he went to Tariq ibn Ziyad and convinced him to invade al-Andala. En route the prophet Mohammed appeared to Tariq in a dream at the head of an army, telling him to go on. When the Saracens had landed in southern Spain Roderic establishing a base at Cordova reached out to the three sons of Wittiza asking for assistance in the common defense. The three arrived but not even daring to enter Cordova they sent to Tariq stating that Roderic was no better than a dog and offering submission and support in return for keeping their ancestral lands and privileges.[41] The offer having been accepted Roderic was defeated at the Battle of Guadalete. It is not clear whether the royal Goths fought against him or simply withheld troops. "Weighed down with weapons he threw himself into the water and was never found."

The three royals travelled to Damascus to confirm their submissions: "Aquila was nominated king of the Goths but in 714 he traveled with his brothers to Damascus and sold the kingdom to Caliph Walid I (705-15) for lands and money." Ardo went on as client-king in Provence. On the death of Almund he appropriated the latter's share of the joint property against the will of the children, who went to Syria to appeal the case. The Saracens moved against Ardo. The boys never recovered the land. One became a Christian bishop. The daughter, Sarah, accepted an arranged marriage with a Saracen, becoming known as "the Gothic woman." She played an important role subsequently in Moorish Spain.

The Saracens crossed the mountains to claim Ardo's Septimania, only to encounter the Basque dynasty of Aquitania, always the allies of the Goths. Odo the Great of Aquitania was at first victorious at the Battle of Bordeaux in 721.[43] As Saracen troops gradually massed in Septimania and in 732 advanced into Vasconia Odo was defeated at the Battle of the River Garonne. They took Bordeaux and were advancing toward Tours when Odo, powerless to stop them, appealed to his arch-enemy, Charles Martel, mayor of the Franks. In one of the first of those lightning marches for which the Carolingian kings became famous, Charles and his army appeared in the path of the Saracens between Tours and Poitiers and in the Battle of Tours settled the question of the Saracen advance into Europe. The Moors were defeated so conclusively that they retreated across the mountains, never to return, leaving Septimania to become part of Francia. Odo also had to pay the price of incorporation into Charles' kingdom, a decision that was repugnant to him and also to his heirs.

Loss and recovery of Aquitania

After his death his son Hunald allied himself with free Lombardy, a violation of the sovereignty of Francia. However, Odo had left the kingdom ambiguously to his two sons jointly, Hunald and Hatto. The latter, loyal to Francia, now went to war with his brother over full possession. Victorius, Hunald blinded and imprisoned his brother, only to be so stricken by conscience that he resigned and entered the church as a monk to do penance. His son Waifer took an early inheritance, becoming duke of Aquitania. Inheriting also the alliance with Lombardy. Waifer decided to honor it, repeating his father's treason, which he justified by arguing that any agreements with Charles Martel became invalid on Martel's death. Since Aquitania was now Pepin's inheritance, the latter and his son, the young Charles, hunted down Waifer, who could only conduct a guerrilla war, and executed him.

Among the contingents of the Frankish army were Bavarians under Tassilo III, Duke of Bavaria, an Agilofing, the hereditary Bavarian royal family. Grifo had installed himself as Duke of Bavaria but Pepin replaced him with a member of the royal family yet a child, Tassilo, whose protector he had become after the death of his father. The loyalty of the Agilolfings was perpetually in question but Pepin exacted numerous oaths of loyalty from Tassilo. However, the latter had married Liutperga, a daughter of Desiderius, king of Lombardy. At a critical point in the campaign Tassilo with all his Bavarians left the field. Out of reach of Pepin, he repudiated all loyalty to Francia. Pepin had no chance to respond as he grew ill and within a few weeks after the execution of Waifer died himself.

The first event of the brothers' reign was the uprising of the Aquitainians and Gascons, in 769, in that territory split between the two kings. Years before, Pepin had suppressed the revolt of Waifer, Duke of Aquitaine. Now, one Hunald (seemingly other than Hunald the duke) led the Aquitainians as far north as Angoulême. Charles met Carloman, but Carloman refused to participate and returned to Burgundy. Charles went to war, leading an army to Bordeaux, where he set up a fort at Fronsac. Hunald was forced to flee to the court of Duke Lupus II of Gascony. Lupus, fearing Charles, turned Hunald over in exchange for peace. He was put in a monastery. Aquitaine was finally fully subdued by the Franks.

Union perforce

The brothers maintained lukewarm relations with the assistance of their mother Bertrada, but in 770 Charles signed a treaty with Duke Tassilo III of Bavaria and married a Lombard Princess (commonly known today as Desiderata), the daughter of King Desiderius, to surround Carloman with his own allies. Though Pope Stephen III first opposed the marriage with the Lombard princess, he would soon have little to fear from a Frankish-Lombard alliance.

Less than a year after his marriage, Charlemagne repudiated Desiderata, and quickly remarried to a 13-year-old Swabian named Hildegard. The repudiated Desiderata returned to her father's court at Pavia. The Lombard's wrath was now aroused and he would gladly have allied with Carloman to defeat Charles. But before any open hostilities could be declared, Carloman died on 5 December 771, seemingly of natural causes. Carloman's widow Gerberga fled to Desiderius' court in Lombardy with her sons for protection.

Italian campaigns

Conquest of Lombardy

The Frankish king Charlemagne was a devout Catholic and maintained a close relationship with the papacy throughout his life. In 772, when Pope Adrian I was threatened by invaders, the king rushed to Rome to provide assistance. Shown here, the pope asks Charlemagne for help at a meeting near Rome.

At the succession of Pope Adrian I in 772, he demanded the return of certain cities in the former exarchate of Ravenna as in accordance with a promise of Desiderius' succession. Desiderius instead took over certain papal cities and invaded the Pentapolis, heading for Rome. Adrian sent embassies to Charlemagne in autumn requesting he enforce the policies of his father, Pepin. Desiderius sent his own embassies denying the pope's charges. The embassies both met at Thionville and Charlemagne upheld the pope's side. Charlemagne promptly demanded what the pope had demanded and Desiderius promptly swore never to comply. Charlemagne and his uncle Bernard crossed the Alps in 773 and chased the Lombards back to Pavia, which they then besieged. Charlemagne temporarily left the siege to deal with Adelchis, son of Desiderius, who was raising an army at Verona. The young prince was chased to the Adriatic littoral and he fled to Constantinople to plead for assistance from Constantine V, who was waging war with Bulgaria.

The siege lasted until the spring of 774, when Charlemagne visited the pope in Rome. There he confirmed his father's grants of land, with some later chronicles claiming-falsely-that he also expanded them, granting Tuscany, Emilia, Venice, and Corsica. The pope granted him the title patrician. He then returned to Pavia, where the Lombards were on the verge of surrendering.

In return for their lives, the Lombards surrendered and opened the gates in early summer. Desiderius was sent to the abbey of Corbie and his son Adelchis died in Constantinople a patrician. Charles, unusually, had himself crowned with the Iron Crown and made the magnates of Lombardy do homage to him at Pavia. Only Duke Arechis II of Benevento refused to submit and proclaimed independence. Charlemagne was then master of Italy as king of the Lombards. He left Italy with a garrison in Pavia and a few Frankish counts in place that very year.

There was still instability, however, in Italy. In 776, Dukes Hrodgaud of Friuli and Hildeprand of Spoleto rebelled. Charlemagne rushed back from Saxony and defeated the duke of Friuli in battle. The duke was slain. The duke of Spoleto signed a treaty. Their co-conspirator, Arechis, was not subdued, and Adelchis, their candidate in Byzantium, never left that city. Northern Italy was now faithfully his.

Southern Italy

In 787 Charlemagne directed his attention toward Benevento, where Arechis was reigning independently. Charlemagne besieged Salerno, and Arechis submitted to vassalage. However, with his death in 792, Benevento again proclaimed independence under his son Grimoald III. Grimoald was attacked by armies of Charles or his sons many times, but Charlemagne himself never returned to the Mezzogiorno, and Grimoald never was forced to surrender to Frankish suzerainty.

Charles and his children

During the first peace of any substantial length (780-782), Charles began to appoint his sons to positions of authority within the realm, in the tradition of the kings and mayors of the past. In 781, he made his two younger sons kings, having them crowned by the Pope. The elder of these two, Carloman, was made king of Italy, taking the Iron Crown which his father had first worn in 774, and in the same ceremony was renamed "Pippin." The younger of the two, Louis, became king of Aquitaine. Charlemagne ordered Pippin and Louis to be raised in the customs of their kingdoms, and he gave their regents some control of their subkingdoms, but real power was always in his hands, though he intended his sons to inherit their realms some day. Nor did he tolerate insubordination in his sons: in 792, he banished his eldest, though possibly illegitimate, son, Pippin the Hunchback, to the monastery of Prüm, because the young man had joined a rebellion against him.

Charles was determined to have his children educated, including his daughters, as he himself was not. His children were taught all the arts, and his daughters were learned in the way of being a woman. His sons took archery, horsemanship, and other outdoor activities.

The sons fought many wars on behalf of their father when they came of age. Charles was mostly preoccupied with the Bretons, whose border he shared and who insurrected on at least two occasions and were easily put down, but he was also sent against the Saxons on multiple occasions. In 805 and 806, he was sent into the Böhmerwald (modern Bohemia) to deal with the Slavs living there (Bohemian tribes, ancestors of the modern Czechs). He subjected them to Frankish authority and devastated the valley of the Elbe, forcing a tribute on them. Pippin had to hold the Avar and Beneventan borders but also fought the Slavs to his north. He was uniquely poised to fight the Byzantine Empire when finally that conflict arose after Charlemagne's imperial coronation and a Venetian rebellion. Finally, Louis was in charge of the Spanish March and also went to southern Italy to fight the duke of Benevento on at least one occasion. He took Barcelona in a great siege in the year 797 (see below).

Charlemagne's attitude toward his daughters has been the subject of much discussion. He kept them at home with him and refused to allow them to contract sacramental marriages - possibly to prevent the creation of cadet branches of the family to challenge the main line, as had been the case with Tassilo of Bavaria - yet he tolerated their extramarital relationships, even rewarding their common-law husbands, and treasured the illegitimate grandchildren they produced for him. He also, apparently, refused to believe stories of their wild behavior. After his death the surviving daughters were banished from the court by their brother, the pious Louis, to take up residence in the convents they had been bequeathed by their father. At least one of them, Bertha, had a recognised relationship, if not a marriage, with Angilbert, a member of Charlemagne's court circle.

Carolingian expansion south

Vasconia and the Pyrenees

The destructive war led by Pepin in Aquitaine, although brought to a satisfactory conclusion for the Franks, proved the Frankish power structure south of the Loire was feeble and unreliable. After the defeat and death of Waifer of Aquitaine in 768, while Aquitaine submitted again to the Carolingian dynasty, a new rebellion broke out in 769 led by Hunald II, maybe son of Waifer. He took refuge with the ally duke Lupus II of Gascony, but probably out of fear of Charlemagne's reprisal, handed him over to the new King of the Franks besides pledging loyalty to him, which seemed to confirm the peace in the Basque area south of the Garonne.

However, wary of new Basque uprisings, Charlemagne seems to have tried to diminish duke Lupus’s power by appointing a certain Seguin as count of Bordeaux (778) and other counts of Frankish background in bordering areas (Toulouse, County of Fézensac), a decision that seriously undermined the authority of the duke of Gascony (Vasconia). The Basque duke in turn seems to have contributed decisively or schemed the Battle of Roncevaux Pass (referred to as “Basque treachery”). The defeat of Charlemagne's army in Roncevaux (778) confirmed him in his determination to rule directly by establishing the Kingdom of Aquitaine (son Louis the Pious proclaimed first king) based on a power base of Frankish officials, distributing lands among colonisers and allocating lands to the Church, which he took as ally.

From 781 (Pallars, Ribagorça) to 806 (Pamplona under Frankish influence), taking the County of Toulouse for a power base, Charlemagne managed to assert Frankish authority on the Pyrenees by establishing vassal counties that were to make up the Marca Hispanica and provide the necessary springboard to attack the Hispanic Muslims (expedition led by William Count of Toulouse and Louis the Pious to capture Barcelona in 801), in a way that Charlemagne had succeeded in expanding the Carolingian rule all around the Pyrenees by 812, although events in the Duchy of Vasconia (rebellion in Pamplona, count overthrown in Aragon, duke Seguin of Bordeaux deposed, uprising of the Basque lords, etc.) were to prove it ephemeral on his death.

Roncesvalles campaign

According to the Muslim historian Ibn al-Athir, the Diet of Paderborn had received the representatives of the Muslim rulers of Zaragoza, Girona, Barcelona, and Huesca. Their masters had been cornered in the Iberian peninsula by Abd ar-Rahman I, the Umayyad emir of Córdoba. These Moorish or "Saracen" rulers offered their homage to the great king of the Franks in return for military support. Seeing an opportunity to extend Christendom and his own power and believing the Saxons to be a fully conquered nation, Charlemagne agreed to go to Spain.

In 778, he led the Neustrian army across the Western Pyrenees, while the Austrasians, Lombards, and Burgundians passed over the Eastern Pyrenees. The armies met at Zaragoza and Charlemagne received the homage of the Muslim rulers, Sulayman al-Arabi and Kasmin ibn Yusuf, but the city did not fall for him. Indeed, Charlemagne was facing the toughest battle of his career where the Muslims had the upper hand and forced him to retreat. He decided to go home, since he could not trust the Basques, whom he had subdued by conquering Pamplona. He turned to leave Iberia, but as he was passing through the Pass of Roncesvalles one of the most famous events of his long reign occurred. The Basques fell on his rearguard and baggage train, utterly destroying it. The Battle of Roncevaux Pass, less a battle than a mere skirmish, left many famous dead: among which were the seneschal Eggihard, the count of the palace Anselm, and the warden of the Breton March, Roland, inspiring the subsequent creation of the Song of Roland (La Chanson de Roland).

Wars with the Moors

The conquest of Italy brought Charlemagne in contact with the Saracens who, at the time, controlled the Mediterranean. Pippin, his son, was much occupied with Saracens in Italy. Charlemagne conquered Corsica and Sardinia at an unknown date and in 799 the Balearic Islands. The islands were often attacked by Saracen pirates, but the counts of Genoa and Tuscany (Boniface) kept them at bay with large fleets until the end of Charlemagne's reign. Charlemagne even had contact with the caliphal court in Baghdad. In 797 (or possibly 801), the caliph of Baghdad, Harun al-Rashid, presented Charlemagne with an Asian elephant named Abul-Abbas and a clock.

In Hispania, the struggle against the Moors continued unabated throughout the latter half of his reign. His son Louis was in charge of the Spanish border. In 785, his men captured Gerona permanently and extended Frankish control into the Catalan littoral for the duration of Charlemagne's reign (and much longer, it remained nominally Frankish until the Treaty of Corbeil in 1258). The Muslim chiefs in the northeast of Islamic Spain were constantly revolting against Córdoban authority, and they often turned to the Franks for help. The Frankish border was slowly extended until 795, when Gerona, Cardona, Ausona, and Urgel were united into the new Spanish March, within the old duchy of Septimania.

In 797 Barcelona, the greatest city of the region, fell to the Franks when Zeid, its governor, rebelled against Córdoba and, failing, handed it to them. The Umayyad authority recaptured it in 799. However, Louis of Aquitaine marched the entire army of his kingdom over the Pyrenees and besieged it for two years, wintering there from 800 to 801, when it capitulated. The Franks continued to press forward against the emir. They took Tarragona in 809 and Tortosa in 811. The last conquest brought them to the mouth of the Ebro and gave them raiding access to Valencia, prompting the Emir al-Hakam I to recognize their conquests in 812.

Eastern campaigns

Saxon Wars

Charlemagne was engaged in almost constant battle throughout his reign, often at the head of his elite scara bodyguard squadrons, with his legendary sword Joyeuse in hand. After thirty years of war and eighteen battles-the Saxon Wars-he conquered Saxonia and proceeded to convert the conquered to Christianity.

The Germanic Saxons were divided into four subgroups in four regions. Nearest to Austrasia was Westphalia and furthest away was Eastphalia. In between these two kingdoms was that of Engria and north of these three, at the base of the Jutland peninsula, was Nordalbingia.

In his first campaign, Charlemagne forced the Engrians in 773 to submit and cut down an Irminsul pillar near Paderborn. The campaign was cut short by his first expedition to Italy. He returned in 775, marching through Westphalia and conquered the Saxon fort of Sigiburg. He then crossed Engria, where he defeated the Saxons again. Finally, in Eastphalia, he defeated a Saxon force, and its leader Hessi converted to Christianity. He returned through Westphalia, leaving encampments at Sigiburg and Eresburg, which had, up until then, been important Saxon bastions. All of Saxony but Nordalbingia was under his control, but Saxon resistance had not ended.

Following his campaign in Italy subjugating the dukes of Friuli and Spoleto, Charlemagne returned very rapidly to Saxony in 776, where a rebellion had destroyed his fortress at Eresburg. The Saxons were once again brought to heel, but their main leader, Widukind, managed to escape to Denmark, home of his wife. Charlemagne built a new camp at Karlstadt. In 777, he called a national diet at Paderborn to integrate Saxony fully into the Frankish kingdom. Many Saxons were baptised as Christians.

In the summer of 779, he again invaded Saxony and reconquered Eastphalia, Engria, and Westphalia. At a diet near Lippe, he divided the land into missionary districts and himself assisted in several mass baptisms (780). He then returned to Italy and, for the first time, there was no immediate Saxon revolt. Saxony was peaceful from 780 to 782.

He returned to Saxony in 782 and instituted a code of law and appointed counts, both Saxon and Frank. The laws were draconian on religious issues; for example, the Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae prescribed death to Saxon pagans who refused to convert to Christianity. This revived a renewal of the old conflict. That year, in autumn, Widukind returned and led a new revolt. In response, at Verden in Lower Saxony, Charlemagne is recorded as having ordered the execution of 4,500 Saxon prisoners, known as the Massacre of Verden ("Verdener Blutgericht"). The killings triggered three years of renewed bloody warfare (783-785). During this war the Frisians were also finally subdued and a large part of their fleet was burned. The war ended with Widukind accepting baptism.

Thereafter, the Saxons maintained the peace for seven years, but in 792 the Westphalians again rose against their conquerors. The Eastphalians and Nordalbingians joined them in 793, but the insurrection did not catch on and was put down by 794. An Engrian rebellion followed in 796, but the presence of Charlemagne, Christian Saxons and Slavs quickly crushed it. The last insurrection of the independent-minded people occurred in 804, more than thirty years after Charlemagne's first campaign against them. This time, the most restive of them, the Nordalbingians, found themselves effectively disempowered from rebellion for the time being. According to Einhard:

The war that had lasted so many years was at length ended by their acceding to the terms offered by the King; which were renunciation of their national religious customs and the worship of devils, acceptance of the sacraments of the Christian faith and religion, and union with the Franks to form one people.

Submission of Bavaria

In 788, Charlemagne turned his attention to Bavaria. He claimed Tassilo was an unfit ruler, due to his oath-breaking. The charges were exaggerated, but Tassilo was deposed anyway and put in the monastery of Jumièges. In 794, he was made to renounce any claim to Bavaria for himself and his family (the Agilolfings) at the synod of Frankfurt. Bavaria was subdivided into Frankish counties, as had been done with Saxony.

Avars campaigns

In 788, the Avars, a pagan Asian horde which had settled down in what is today Hungary (Einhard called them Huns), invaded Friuli and Bavaria. Charlemagne was preoccupied until 790 with other things, but in that year, he marched down the Danube into their territory and ravaged it to the Gyor. Then, a Lombard army under Pippin marched into the Drava valley and ravaged Pannonia. The campaigns would have continued if the Saxons had not revolted again in 792, breaking seven years of peace.

For the next two years, Charlemagne was occupied with the Slavs against the Saxons. Pippin and Duke Eric of Friuli continued, however, to assault the Avars' ring-shaped strongholds. The great Ring of the Avars, their capital fortress, was taken twice. The booty was sent to Charlemagne at his capital, Aachen, and redistributed to all his followers and even to foreign rulers, including King Offa of Mercia. Soon the Avar tuduns had thrown in the towel and travelled to Aachen to subject themselves to Charlemagne as vassals and Christians. Charlemagne accepted their surrender and sent one native chief, baptised Abraham, back to Avaria with the ancient title of khagan. Abraham kept his people in line, but in 800, the Bulgarians under Khan Krum swept the Avar state away. In the 10th century, the Magyars settled the Pannonian plain and presented a new threat to Charlemagne's descendants.

Northeast Slav expeditions

In 789, in recognition of his new pagan neighbours, the Slavs, Charlemagne marched an Austrasian-Saxon army across the Elbe into Obotrite territory. The Slavs immediately submitted under their leader Witzin. Charlemagne then accepted the surrender of the Wiltzes under Dragovit and demanded many hostages and the permission to send, unmolested, missionaries into the pagan region. The army marched to the Baltic before turning around and marching to the Rhine with much booty and no harassment. The tributary Slavs became loyal allies. In 795, when the Saxons broke the peace, the Abotrites and Wiltzes rose in arms with their new master against the Saxons. Witzin died in battle and Charlemagne avenged him by harrying the Eastphalians on the Elbe. Thrasuco, his successor, led his men to conquest over the Nordalbingians and handed their leaders over to Charlemagne, who greatly honoured him. The Abotrites remained loyal until Charles' death and fought later against the Danes.

Southeast Slave expeditions

When Charlemagne incorporated much of Central Europe, he brought the Frankish <3 state face to face with the Avars and Slavs in the southeast.[50] The most southeast Frankish neighbors were Croats, who settled in Pannonian Croatia and Littoral Croatian Duchy. While fighting the Avars, the Franks had called for their support. During the 790s, when Charlemagne campaigned against the Avars, he won a major victory in 796. Pannonian Croatian duke Vojnomir of Pannonian Croatia aided Charlemagne, and the Franks made themselves overlords over the Croatians of northern Dalmatia, Slavonia, and Pannonia.

The Frankish commander Eric of Friuli wanted to extend his dominion by conquering Littoral Croatian Duchy. During that time, Littoral Croatia was ruled by duke Višeslav of Croatia, who was one of the first known Croatian dukes. In the Battle of Trsat, the forces of Eric fled their positions and were totally routed by the forces of Višeslav. Eric himself was among the killed, and his death and defeat proved a great blow for the Carolingian Empire.

Charlemagne also directed his attention to the Slavs to the west of the Avar khaganate: the Carantanians and Carniolans. These people were subdued by the Lombards and Bavarii, were made tributaries, but were never fully incorporated into the Frankish state.

Imperium

Imperial diplomacy

In 799, Pope Leo III had been mistreated by the Romans, who tried to put out his eyes and tear out his tongue. Leo escaped and fled to Charlemagne at Paderborn, asking him to intervene in Rome and restore him. Charlemagne, advised by Alcuin of York, agreed to travel to Rome, doing so in November 800 and holding a council on 1 December. On 23 December Leo swore an oath of innocence. At Mass, on Christmas Day (25 December), when Charlemagne knelt at the altar to pray, the Pope crowned him Imperator Romanorum ("Emperor of the Romans") in Saint Peter's Basilica. In so doing, the Pope was effectively reviving the Western Roman Empire and nullifying the legitimacy of Empress Irene of Constantinople (Leo III did not consider her a legitimate claimant to the Byzantine throne because she was a woman). Einhard says that Charlemagne was ignorant of the Pope's intent and did not want any such coronation:

[H]e at first had such an aversion that he declared that he would not have set foot in the Church the day that they [the imperial titles] were conferred, although it was a great feast-day, if he could have foreseen the design of the Pope.

Many modern scholars suggest that Charlemagne was indeed aware of the coronation; certainly he cannot have missed the bejeweled crown waiting on the altar when he came to pray. In any event, he used these circumstances to claim that he was the renewer of the Roman Empire, which had apparently fallen into degradation under the Byzantines. In his official charters, Charles preferred the style Karolus serenissimus Augustus a Deo coronatus magnus pacificus imperator Romanum gubernans imperium ("Charles, most serene Augustus crowned by God, the great, peaceful emperor ruling the Roman empire") to a more direct Imperator Romanorum ("Emperor of the Romans").

The iconoclasm of the Byzantine Isaurian Dynasty was endorsed by the Franks. When the Second Council of Nicaea reintroduced the veneration of icons under Empress Irene, the council was not recognized by Charlemagne since no Frankish emissaries had been invited although Charlemagne was ruling more than three provinces of the old Roman empire and was considered equal in rank to the Byzantine emperor. And although the Pope supported the reintroduction of the iconic veneration he thus politically digressed from Byzantium.[57] He also most certainly desired to increase the influence of the papacy, honour his saviour Charlemagne, and solve the constitutional issues then most troubling to European jurists in an era when Rome was not in the hands of an emperor. Thus, Charlemagne's assumption of the imperial title was not an usurpation in the eyes of the Franks or Italians. It was, however, in Byzantium, where it was protested by Irene and her successor Nicephorus I-neither of whom had any great effect in enforcing their protests.

The Byzantines, however, still held several territories in Italy: Venice (what was left of the Exarchate of Ravenna), Reggio (in Calabria), Brindisi (in Apulia), and Naples (the Ducatus Neapolitanus). These regions remained outside of Frankish hands until 804, when the Venetians, torn by infighting, transferred their allegiance to the Iron Crown of Pippin, Charles' son. The Pax Nicephori ended. Nicephorus ravaged the coasts with a fleet, and the only instance of war between the Byzantines and the Franks, as it was, began. It lasted until 810, when the pro-Byzantine party in Venice gave their city back to the Byzantine Emperor, and the two emperors of Europe made peace: Charlemagne received the Istrian peninsula and in 812 the emperor Michael I Rhangabes recognised his status as Emperor,[58] although not necessarily as "Emperor of the Romans".

Danish attacks

After the conquest of Nordalbingia, the Frankish frontier was brought into contact with Scandinavia. The pagan Danes, "a race almost unknown to his ancestors, but destined to be only too well known to his sons" as Charles Oman described them, inhabiting the Jutland peninsula, had heard many stories from Widukind and his allies who had taken refuge with them about the dangers of the Franks and the fury which their Christian king could direct against pagan neighbours.

In 808, the king of the Danes, Godfred, built the vast Danevirke across the isthmus of Schleswig. This defence, last employed in the Danish-Prussian War of 1864, was at its beginning a 30 km (19 mi) long earthenwork rampart. The Danevirke protected Danish land and gave Godfred the opportunity to harass Frisia and Flanders with pirate raids. He also subdued the Frank-allied Wiltzes and fought the Abotrites.

Godfred invaded Frisia, joked of visiting Aachen, but was murdered before he could do any more, either by a Frankish assassin or by one of his own men. Godfred was succeeded by his nephew Hemming, who concluded the Treaty of Heiligen with Charlemagne in late 811.

Death

In 813, Charlemagne called Louis the Pious, king of Aquitaine, his only surviving legitimate son, to his court. There Charlemagne crowned his son with his own hands as co-emperor and sent him back to Aquitaine. He then spent the autumn hunting before returning to Aachen on 1 November. In January, he fell ill with pleurisy.[60] In deep depression (mostly because many of his plans were not yet realized), he took to his bed on 21 January and as Einhard tells it:

He died January twenty-eighth, the seventh day from the time that he took to his bed, at nine o'clock in the morning, after partaking of the Holy Communion, in the seventy-second year of his age and the forty-seventh of his reign.

He was buried the same day as his death, in Aachen Cathedral, although the cold weather and the nature of his illness made such a hurried burial unnecessary. The earliest surviving planctus, the Planctus de obitu Karoli, was composed by a monk of Bobbio, which he had patronised. A later story, told by Otho of Lomello, Count of the Palace at Aachen in the time of Otto III, would claim that he and Emperor Otto had discovered Charlemagne's tomb: the emperor, they claimed, was seated upon a throne, wearing a crown and holding a sceptre, his flesh almost entirely incorrupt. In 1165, Frederick I re-opened the tomb again and placed the emperor in a sarcophagus beneath the floor of the cathedral. In 1215 Frederick II re-interred him in a casket made of gold and silver.

Charlemagne's death greatly affected many of his subjects, particularly those of the literary clique who had surrounded him at Aachen. An anonymous monk of Bobbio lamented:

From the lands where the sun rises to western shores, People are crying and wailing...the Franks, the Romans, all Christians, are stung with mourning and great worry...the young and old, glorious nobles, all lament the loss of their Caesar...the world laments the death of Charles...O Christ, you who govern the heavenly host, grant a peaceful place to Charles in your kingdom. Alas for miserable me.

He was succeeded by his surviving son, Louis, who had been crowned the previous year. His empire lasted only another generation in its entirety; its division, according to custom, between Louis's own sons after their father's death laid the foundation for the modern state of Germany.

Administration

As an administrator, Charlemagne stands out for his many reforms: monetary, governmental, military, cultural, and ecclesiastical. He is the main protagonist of the "Carolingian Renaissance."

Military

It has long been held that the dominance of Charlemagne's military was based on a "cavalry revolution" led by Charles Martel in 730s. However, the stirrup, which made the "shock cavalry" lance charge possible, was not introduced to the Frankish kingdom until the late eighth century. Instead, Charlemagne's success rested primarily on novel siege technologies and excellent logistics.[66]

However, large numbers of horses were used by the Frankish military during the age of Charlemagne. This was because horses provided a quick, long-distance method of transporting troops, which was critical to building and maintaining such a large empire.

Economic and monetary reforms

Charlemagne had an important role in determining the immediate economic future of Europe. Pursuing his father's reforms, Charlemagne abolished the monetary system based on the gold sou, and he and the Anglo-Saxon King Offa of Mercia took up the system set in place by Pippin. There were strong pragmatic reasons for this abandonment of a gold standard, notably a shortage of gold itself.

The gold shortage was a direct consequence of the conclusion of peace with Byzantium, which resulted in the ceding of Venice and Sicily and the loss of their trade routes to Africa and to the East. This standardisation also had the effect of economically harmonising and unifying the complex array of currencies which had been in use at the commencement of his reign, thus simplifying trade and commerce.

He established a new standard, the livre carolinienne (from the Latin libra, the modern pound), which was based upon a pound of silver-a unit of both money and weight-which was worth 20 sous (from the Latin solidus [which was primarily an accounting device and never actually minted], the modern shilling) or 240 deniers (from the Latin denarius, the modern penny). During this period, the livre and the sou were counting units; only the denier was a coin of the realm.

Charlemagne instituted principles for accounting practice by means of the Capitulare de villis of 802, which laid down strict rules for the way in which incomes and expenses were to be recorded.

The lending of money for interest was prohibited and then strengthened in 814, when Charlemagne introduced the Capitulary for the Jews, a draconian prohibition on Jews engaging in money-lending.

In addition to this macro-oriented reform of the economy of his empire, Charlemagne also performed a significant number of microeconomic reforms, such as direct control of prices and levies on certain goods and commodities.

Charlemagne applied the system to much of the European continent, and Offa's standard was voluntarily adopted by much of England. After Charlemagne's death, continental coinage degraded, and most of Europe resorted to using the continued high-quality English coin until about 1100.

Education reforms

A part of Charlemagne's success as warrior and administrator can be traced to his admiration for learning. His reign and the era it ushered in are often referred to as the Carolingian Renaissance because of the flowering of scholarship, literature, art, and architecture which characterize it. Charlemagne, brought into contact with the culture and learning of other countries (especially Visigothic Spain, Anglo-Saxon England, and Lombard Italy) due to his vast conquests, greatly increased the provision of monastic schools and scriptoria (centres for book-copying) in Francia.

Most of the presently surviving works of classical Latin were copied and preserved by Carolingian scholars. Indeed, the earliest manuscripts available for many ancient texts are Carolingian. It is almost certain that a text which survived to the Carolingian age survives still.

The pan-European nature of Charlemagne's influence is indicated by the origins of many of the men who worked for him: Alcuin, an Anglo-Saxon from York; Theodulf, a Visigoth, probably from Septimania; Paul the Deacon, Lombard; Peter of Pisa and Paulinus of Aquileia, Italians; and Angilbert, Angilram, Einhard, and Waldo of Reichenau, Franks.

Charlemagne took a serious interest in scholarship, promoting the liberal arts at the court, ordering that his children and grandchildren be well-educated, and even studying himself (in a time when even leaders who promoted education did not take time to learn themselves) under the tutelage of Paul the Deacon, from whom he learned grammar; Alcuin, with whom he studied rhetoric, dialectic (logic), and astronomy (he was particularly interested in the movements of the stars); and Einhard, who assisted him in his studies of arithmetic.

His great scholarly failure, as Einhard relates, was his inability to write: when in his old age he began attempts to learn-practicing the formation of letters in his bed during his free time on books and wax tablets he hid under his pillow-"his effort came too late in life and achieved little success", and his ability to read - which Einhard is silent about, and which no contemporary source supports-has also been called into question.

In 800, Charlemagne enlarged the hostel at the Muristan in Jerusalem and added a library to it. He certainly had not been personally in Jerusalem.

Church reforms

Writing reforms

During Charles' reign, the Roman half uncial script and its cursive version, which had given rise to various continental minuscule scripts, were combined with features from the insular scripts that were being used in Irish and English monasteries. Carolingian minuscule was created partly under the patronage of Charlemagne. Alcuin of York, who ran the palace school and scriptorium at Aachen, was probably a chief influence in this.

The revolutionary character of the Carolingian reform, however, can be over-emphasised; efforts at taming the crabbed Merovingian and Germanic hands had been underway before Alcuin arrived at Aachen. The new minuscule was disseminated first from Aachen and later from the influential scriptorium at Tours, where Alcuin retired as an abbot.

Political reforms

Charlemagne engaged in many reforms of Frankish governance, but he continued also in many traditional practices, such as the division of the kingdom among sons.[citation needed]

Organization

The Carolingian king exercised the bannum, the right to rule and command. He had supreme jurisdiction in judicial matters, made legislation, led the army, and protected both the Church and the poor. His administration was an attempt to organize the kingdom, church, and nobility around him. However, the effort was heavily dependent upon the efficiency, loyalty, and support of his subjects.

Imperial coronation

Historians have debated for centuries whether Charlemagne was aware of the Pope's intent to crown him Emperor prior to the coronation (Charlemagne declared that he would not have entered Saint Peter's had he known), but that debate has often obscured the more significant question of why the Pope granted the title and why Charlemagne chose to accept it once he did.

Roger Collins points out "[t]hat the motivation behind the acceptance of the imperial title was a romantic and antiquarian interest in reviving the Roman empire is highly unl

Charlemagne married Hildegard of Vinzgau Abt 772, Aix-la-Chapelle, France. Hildegard (daughter of Gerold, Count of Vinzgau I and Imma of Swabia) was born Abt 757, North Rhine-Westphalia, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany; died 30 Apr 783, Thionville, Eure-et-Loir, Centre, France. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Hildegard (758 - 30 April 783) was the Germanic daughter of count Gerold of Vinzgouw and Emma of Alamannia, daughter of Hnabi, Duke of Alamannia. She was the second wife of Charlemagne, who married her about 771. They had the following children:

Charles, (772 or 773-811), Count of Maine from 781, joint King of the Franks with Charlemagne from 800
Adelaide (773 or 774)
Pippin (773 or 777-810), born Carloman and later renamed at baptism, king of Italy from 781
Rotrude (or Hruodrud) (777-810)
Louis the Pious, king of Aquitaine from 781, emperor from 813 (sole Emperor from 814) until 840
Lothair, twin brother of Louis, died young in 780
Bertha (779-823?)
Gisela (781-808?)
Hildegarde (782-783?)

Other Events:

• Name:

Notes:

He gained the title of Herzog von Bayern. He gained the title of Graf von Altdorf.

Welf (or Hwelf) I of Altorf (died 825) was the son of the 9th century Frankish count Rothard of Metz, to whom the sons of Charles Martel entrusted half of Alemannia. Welf was master of several counties in the southern Rhineland & Bavaria. His family became politically powerful when Louis the Pious chose his oldest daughter as his 2nd wife. Though Welf himself never became publicly prominent, his family became interwoven with the Carolingian dynasty.

He is the oldest known member of the Elder House of Welf. Welf is mentioned only once: on the occasion of the wedding of his daughter Judith with Emperor Louis the Pious in 819.

Marriage and issue

Welf married Hedwig, Duchess of Bavaria, daughter of the Saxon count Isanbart; Hedwig was abbess of Chelles. They had the following:

Judith, Roman Empress and Frankish Queen, died 843;
Rudolph, died 866;
Conrad, Count of Paris, ancestor of the Welf kings of Burgundy;
Hemma, Frankish Queen, married to Louis the German, son of Louis the Pious, died 876.

Welf — Hedwig. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Hedwig was abbess of Chelles.

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Pepin (or Pippin) (died 24 September 768), called the Short or the Little (Pépin le Bref) or the Younger (Pippin der Jüngere), rarely the Great (Pippin der Grosse), was the first King of the Franks (752-68) of the Carolingian dynasty. In 741 he and his brother Carloman succeeded their father, Charles Martel, as mayors of the palace and de facto rulers of the kingdom during an interregnum (737-43). After the retirement of Carloman (747), Pepin obtained the permission of Pope Zachary to depose the last of the Merovingian kings, Childeric III, and assume the throne (752). As he was named for his grandfather, Pepin of Heristal, in turn named for his grandfather, Pepin of Landen, both mayors of the palace, Pepin the Short has sometimes been numbered Pepin III.

Assumption of power

Pepin's father Charles Martel died in 741. He divided the rule of the Frankish kingdom between Pepin and his elder brother, Carloman, his surviving sons by his first wife: Carloman became Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia, Pepin became Mayor of the Palace of Neustria. Grifo, Charles's son by his second wife, Swanahild (also known as Swanhilde), demanded a share in the inheritance, but he was imprisoned in a monastery by his two half-brothers.

In the Frankish realm the unity of the kingdom was essentially connected with the person of the king. So Carloman, to secure this unity, raised the Merovingian Childeric to the throne (743). Then in 747 Carloman either resolved to or was pressured into entering a monastery. This left Francia in the hands of Pepin as sole mayor of the palace and dux et princeps Francorum.

At the time of Carloman's retirement, Grifo escaped his imprisonment and fled to Duke Odilo of Bavaria, who was married to Hiltrude, Pepin's sister. Pepin put down the renewed revolt led by his half-brother and succeeded in completely restoring the boundaries of the kingdom.

Under the reorganization of Francia by Charles Martel, the dux et princeps Francorum was the commander of the armies of the kingdom, in addition to his administrative duties as mayor of the palace, and specifically commander of the standing guard which Charles Martel had begun maintaining year-round since Toulouse in 721.

First Carolingian king

Anointed a first time in 752 in Soissons by the archbishop of Mainz, Pepin added to his power after Pope Stephen II traveled all the way to Paris to anoint him a second time in a lavish ceremony at the Basilica of St Denis in 754, bestowing upon him the additional title of patricius Romanorum (Patrician of the Romans) and is the first recorded crowning of a civil ruler by a Pope. As life expectancies were short in those days, and Pepin wanted family continuity, the Pope also anointed Pepin's sons, Charles (eventually known as Charlemagne) and Carloman.

Pepin was subject to the decisions of Childeric III who had only the title of King but no power. Since Pepin had control over the magnates and actually had the power of the king, he now addressed to Pope Zachary a suggestive question:

In regard to the kings of the Franks who no longer possess the royal power: is this state of things proper?

Hard pressed by the Lombards, Pope Zachary welcomed this move by the Franks to end an intolerable condition and lay the constitutional foundations for the exercise of the royal power. The Pope replied that such a state of things is not proper: the de facto power is more important than the de jure power.

After this decision the throne was declared vacant. Childeric III was deposed and confined to a monastery. He was the last of the Merovingians.

According to ancient custom, Pepin was then elected King of the Franks by an assembly of Frankish nobles, with a large portion of his army on hand (in case the nobility inclined not to honor the Papal bull). Meanwhile, Grifo continued his rebellion, but was eventually killed in the battle of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne in 753.

Expansion of the Frankish realm

Pepin's first major act as king was to go to war against the Lombard king Aistulf, who had expanded into the ducatus Romanus. Victorious, he forced the Lombard king to return property seized from the Church. He confirmed the Papacy in possession of Ravenna and the Pentapolis, the so-called Donation of Pepin, whereby the Papal States were established and the temporal reign of the Papacy began.[4] At about 752, he turned his attention to Septimania first investing Narbonne, but didn't manage to capture it from Iberian Muslim invaders up to 7 years later in 759, when they were driven out to Hispania.

However, Aquitaine still remained under Waifer's Basque-Aquitanian rule out of Frankish reach. Waifer appears to have confiscated Church lands, maybe distributing them among his troops. In 760, denouncing this actions, Pepin ravaged with fire and sword most of Aquitaine and in retaliation counts loyal to Waifer ravaged Burgundy. Pepin in turn attacked the Aquitanian-held (urban, non-Frankish 'Romans') Clermont and Bourbon, defended by Waifer's Basque troops, who were overcome, captured and deported into northern France.

In 763, Pepin advanced further into the heart of Waifer’s domains and captured major strongholds (Poitiers, Limoges, Angouleme, etc.), after which Waifer counterattacked and war got bitter. Pepin opted to spread terror, burning villas, destroying vineyards and depopulating monasteries. By 765, the brutal tactics seemed to pay off for the Franks, who destroyed resistance in central Aquitaine (Waifer's capital city Toulouse fell in 767) and devastated the whole region. As a result, Aquitanian nobles and Basques from beyond the Garonne too saw no option but to accept a pro-Frankish peace treaty (Fronsac, c. 768). Waifer escaped but was assassinated by his own frustrated followers.

Legacy

Pepin died during a campaign, in 768 at the age of 54, a relatively old age for the time. He was interred in the church of Saint Denis. His wife Bertrada was also interred there in 783. Charlemagne rebuilt the Basilica in honor of his parents and placed markers at the entrance.

The Frankish realm was divided according to the Salic law between his two sons: Charlemagne and Carloman I.

Historical opinion often seems to regard him as the lesser son and lesser father of two greater men, though a great man in his own right. He continued to build up the heavy cavalry which his father had begun. He maintained the standing army that his father had found necessary to protect the realm and form the core of its full army in wartime. He not only contained the Iberian Muslims as his father had, but drove them out of the country. He continued his father's expansion of the Frankish church (missionary work in Germany and Scandinavia) and the institutional infrastructure (feudalism) that would prove the backbone of medieval Europe.

His rule, while not as great as either his father's or son's, was historically important and of great benefit to the Franks as a people. Pepin's assumption of the crown, and the title of Patrician of Rome, were harbingers of his son's imperial coronation which is usually seen as the founding of the Holy Roman Empire. He made the Carolingians de jure what his father had made them de facto - the ruling dynasty of the Franks and the foremost power of Europe. While not known as a great general, he was undefeated during his lifetime.

Family

In 741, Pepin married Bertrada of Laon. Her father, Charibert, was the son of Pepin II's brother, Martin of Laon. They are known to have had eight children, at least three of whom survived to adulthood:

Charles (2 April 742 - 28 January 814), (Charlemagne)
Carloman (751 - 4 December 771)
Gisela (757-810)
Pepin, died in infancy.
Chrothais, died young, buried in Metz.
Adelais, died young, buried in Metz.
Two unnamed daughters

Pepin married Bertrada of Laon 740. Bertrada (daughter of Heribert de Laon, Comte de Laon) was born 720, Laon, Aisne, Picardie, France; died 12 Jul 783, Choisy, France; was buried Paris, ÃŽle-de-France, France. [Group Sheet]

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Bertrada of Laon, also called Bertha Broadfoot (cf. Latin: Regina pede ancae i.e. the queen with the goose-foot), (between 710 and 727 - June 12, 783) was a Frankish queen.

Biography

She was born in Laon, in today's Aisne, France, the daughter of Caribert of Laon. She married Pepin the Short, the son of Charles Martel, the Frankish "Mayor of the Palace", in 740, although the union was not canonically sanctioned until several years later. Eleven years later, in 751, Pepin and Bertrada became King and Queen of the Franks, following Pepin's successful coup against the Frankish Merovingian monarchs.

Bertrada and Pepin are known to have had four children, three sons and one daughter: of these, Charles (Charlemagne), Carloman, and Gisela survived to adulthood, whilst Pepin died in infancy. Charlemagne and Carloman would inherit the two halves of their father's kingdom when he died, and Gisela became a nun.

Bertrada lived at the court of her elder son Charles, and according to Einhard their relationship was excellent. She recommended him to marry his first wife, Desiderata, a daughter of the Lombard king Desiderius, but he soon divorced her. Einhard claims this was the only episode that ever strained relations between mother and son. Bertrada lived with Charlemagne until her death in 783; the king buried her in Saint Denis Basilica with great honors.

Notes:

Gerold of Vinzgau (also Vintzgouw or Anglachgau; d. 784/786 or 795) was a count in Kraichgau and Anglachgau. His daughter married King Charlemagne in 771. In 784 generous donations to the monastery of Lorsch by Gerold and Emma are recorded.

Marriage and issue

He married by 758 to Emma (d. 789 or 798 or after 784), daughter of Hnabi, Duke of Alamannia. They had the following:

Gerold
Udalrich
Hildegard, born in 758, married King Charlemagne in 771.
probably Adrian, Count of Orléans, father of Odo I, Count of Orléans
Eric of Friuli (?), not listed on the site of the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy

Through Udalrich, Gerold is reckoned as the founder of the family of the Udalrichings.

Gerold married Imma of Swabia Abt 758. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Also known as Emma.

Conrad — Adelheid d'Alsace. [Group Sheet]