Karl der Große was born of German blood and German language in Franconia (Frankin). He could

speak ancient Teuton, Latin and Greek and he became king at age twenty-nine. Karl, the second son

of Pepin the Short and Bertrada, was born in 751. In 754, Pepin convinced Pope Stephen II to

crown him in exchange for defending Italy against the Germanic Lombards, a tribe occupying central

and northern Italy. Karl saw war as a child riding with his father's army, and he would continue to

personally lead men into battle throughout 53 campaigns.



The Moslem governor of Barcelona asked for his help in defeating the Moslim caliph of Cordova,

another Moslem, and in the year 777, Karl led the army across the Pyrenees until he realized he had

been deceived. As he led his army back through the mountains, the Basques attacked his rear guard

and killed nearly every man in the squad led by Karl's nephew Roland, a battle which became

immortalized in song and story. In 795, Karl returned and conquered part of northeast Spain before

again assaulting the persistent Lombards in Italy, a feat for which Pope Leo III crowned him

Emperor of the Romans on Christmas Day in 800 AD. Charlemagne led and sent his armies far.



He subdued the unruly Saxon heathens, giving them a choice between baptism or death, resulting in

the beheading of 4,500 of them in one day for high treason. He drove back the advancing Slavs,

defeated the Avars, and by the thirty-fourth year of his reign, he could resign himself to peace until

his death in 814. He bestowed a governmental structure and unifying faith upon Western Europe

which had been torn by religious and political strife for years. He managed to bring all of the people

between the Vistula and the Atlantic, the Baltic and the Pyrenees, nearly all of Italy and much of the

Balkans under his rule.



Charlemagne made military service a condition of owning land and created a system of knighthood

and noblemen, along with a whole code of moral behavior in order to build a strong military. Building

upon the Roman system of feudalism, Charlemagne enabled this new noble military class to ensure

the well-being of serfs who would in turn provide and supply the needs of the nobleman and his

militarily. In this well planned society, Charlemagne can be considered the Father of Feudalism. He

formed a structured society based on public participation in the government with assemblies of armed

property owners, and he respectfully delegated various individual responsibilities to all.



It was Charlemagne who first attempted to organize his kingdom by dividing his power with various

levels of government: an aristocrat appointed as Count controlled the lords and nobles who in turn

controlled the serfs or peasants on the fief of each knight. The counts took care of administrative

tasks and supervised Church business and an appointed Bishop headed a diocese within certain

borders. In those areas where there were potentially volatile situations, Charlemagne appointed a

Margrave. By his formulation of the Chapters of Legislation, once a year they all traveled to the

king's court at Aachen to convene and to discuss governmental business.



Here they presented items for oral vote (out of the jurata, a custom in ninth century Frankish lands

where a sworn group of inquirers was used to decide many local issues from land ownership to

criminal guilt, came the jury system of modern times). In between these meetings, Charlemagne

traveled to the various capitals of the region, and held assemblies of the nobles where they would

hash things out and come to agreement on various issues. They also shared a good time with much

joking and talking. To fill in the gap between meetings, he created a group of emissaries called the

missi dominici who travelled throughout the kingdom hearing complaints, making sure that things

were running smoothly and collecting taxes.



Through the Capitulare missorum, the people of Francia had their own guarantee of equality, justice

and freedom from tyranny four centuries before England’s Magna Carta was established. Under

Charlemgane's enlightened rule, conscientious effort was made to transform barbarism into

civilization through legislation pertaining to most aspects of civilized living from religion to

government. A great bridge was built across the Rhine at Mainz to produce active trade and a stable

currency was maintained. He even established a system of relief for the poor with taxation on the

nobles and the clergy to pay its costs.



Ancient Saxon poem: "Great and Holy Wotan, help us and our field general Wittekind and the

captains to defeat Karl the Butcher. I give you an aurochs, two sheep and a beehive. I slaughter all

your prisoners in your holy mountain realm."



He called in foreign scholars to restore the schools of France and then organized the royal palace at

Aachen as a teaching facility by sending for teachers from England and elsewhere, turning the palace

school into an active center of study and the birthplace of educational reform that spread throughout

the realm. Even Charlemagne himself was an eager pupil, as well as his family. While he studied

Latin, he continued to speak German, and he compiled a German grammar and collected specimens

of early German poetry. Out of his schools came the university system of Europe. Charlemagne was

profusely generous to the Church, but also made himself its master, yet he also had open negotiations

with Moslem rulers suggesting fair treatment of their respective minority populations.



What we know as the Holy Roman Empire was born of a noble vision of world peace, order and

civilization. German rulers of the nineteenth-century were enamored of the memory of Charlemagne.

In 1843, Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV had Charlemagne's tomb opened. His bones were still

intact, except for part of the right arm, and his living height was calculated just over 6 feet. In 1861,

1874, and finally 1906 it was opened again.



Einhard's "The Life of Charlemagne"1880: "Charles was large and strong, and of lofty stature,

though not disproportionately tall (his height is well known to have been seven times the length of his

foot); the upper part of his head was round, his eyes very large and animated, nose a little long, hair

fair, and face laughing and merry. Thus his appearance was always stately and dignified, whether he

was standing or sitting; although his neck was thick and somewhat short, and his belly rather

prominent; but the symmetry of the rest of his body concealed these defects. His gait was firm, his

whole carriage manly, and his voice clear, but not so strong as his size led one to expect. His health

was excellent, except during the four years preceding his death, when he was subject to frequent

fevers; at the last he even limped a little with one foot."



" Even in those years he consulted rather his own inclinations than the advice of physicians, who were

almost hateful to him, because they wanted him to give up roasts, to which he was accustomed, and

to eat boiled meat instead. In accordance with the national custom, he took frequent exercise on

horseback and in the chase, accomplishments in which scarcely any people in the world can equal the

Franks. He enjoyed the exhalations from natural warm springs, and often practised swimming, in

which he was such an adept that none could surpass him; and hence it was that he built his palace at

Aixla-Chapelle, and lived there constantly during his latter years until his death. He used not only to

invite his sons to his bath, but his nobles and friends, and now and then a troop of his retinue or body

guard, so that a hundred or more persons sometimes bathed with him."



He was so fond of his six daughters that he talked them out of marriage, and they consequently

consoled themselves with a variety of love affairs and bore many illegitimate children, which

Charlemagne accepted with affection, since he himself had four successive wives and five mistresses

who bore him eighteen children, of whom only eight were legitimate. He was said to be moderate in

his eating and drinking and maintained good health . He rarely entertained, and instead greatly

enjoyed music and a good book. He had almost a clairvoyant intelligence, extreme vitality, unbridled

enthusiasm for science, law, literature, and theology; he mocked superstition yet employed

soothsayers. He spoke directly and honestly, and was kind, charitable and emotional, yet he could

be ruthless when required, especially in regard to spreading Christianity.



His empire became far greater than the Byzantine, surpassed in scope only by the realm of the

Abbasid caliphate, but suddenly Germany had to protect itself against the Norse, who raided the

Frisian coast, and against the Slavs on their murderous rampages. Because of this danger, he divided

his empire in 806 among his three sons: Pepin, Louis, and Karl. Pepin died in 810, Karl in 811,and

only Ludwig (Louis) remained. In 813, Louis was elevated from the rank of king to that of emperor,

and his father, by then age 72 and in the 47th year of his reign, said: “Blessed be Thou, O Lord God,

Who hast granted me the grace to see with my own eyes my son seated on my throne!” Four months

later, Karl der Grosse died and was buried under the dome of the cathedral at Aachen, dressed in his

imperial robes. He was Carolus Magnus, Karl der Grosse, Charlemagne.

