Charlemagne (or Charles I ^{er the} Large one, in Latin Carolus Magnus) was:

- King of the Francs from 768 to 814

- Emperor of Occident from 800 to 814

- King of Lombardic from 774 to 814

He can be regarded as the “Father of Europe” before the hour. He posed the principles of government which the great European States inherited.

Grandson of Charles Martel, Charles was the son of Pepin the Short and Bertrade. He inherited on on September 24th, 768 a kingdom (Austrasie, Neustrie and maritime Aquitaine) which enclosed the grounds of his/her younger brother, Carloman, with which he hardly got along.

The death of Carloman, on on December 4th, 771, left in Charles the whole of the possessions of the Francs, i.e. Beats it and part of the Germanic one; but he also inherited the problems born of the regional idiosyncracies (Aquitaine, Bavaria), and of the political traditions of the first Carolingians: protection of the Holy See, fights against the infidel, pagan or Moslem.

One of its first acts was to repudiate his wife, the girl of Didier, king of the Lombardic ones, who took refuge near his father, with the woman and the sons of Carloman. Charles continued them and besieged them in Pavia, which it took in June 774, and king of the Lombardic ones proclaimed itself. With the call of the Adrien pope, Charles also seized the duchies of Spolète and Bénévent. King d' Italie, it could from now on impose his views to the Roman pontiff.

In 46 years of reign and 53 military campaigns, Charles little by little will join together under his authority the major part of Western Europe and will constitute the vastest territorial gathering that the Occident knew since the Roman Empire; with its death, only control from the Francs Brittany and, of course, Spain and British Isles will escape. Practitioner the christianization forced like instrument of assimilation, Charles will complete his work of gathering by resurrecting the concept of Western Empire, lost since the collapse of Rome, into 476, and whose memory was perpetuated by the teaching of the clerks.

Every year, in March or in May, the free men, compelled with the military service, is convened with their equipment at general meeting: while the emperor and the large ones make a review of the problems concerning the State, the army prepares; then, the fixed goals of war, the franque cavalry shakes with the conquest of an empire.

Into Germanic, object of its essential concerns, Charlemagne undertakes to subject the Germanic people remained out of franque mobility. It will take him thirty years to overcome the Saxon ones which, installed in a difficult area of access, carry out a war of partisans behind a famous chief, Widukind. The Carolingian army appears impotent here, and Charlemagne will come to end from resistance saxonne only while resorting to terror: massacre prisoners; systematic devastation of the country, in particular in 784-785; massive deportations, as in 804; forced conversions (of Widukind in 785). In same time, roads and forts are built, which allow the establishment of frank groups.

Following the tender of Saxony, the Plank, neighbor, must accept the franque supervision. As for Bavaria, it is annexed into 788 following the continual rebellions of its duke, Tassilon, however vassal of Charlemagne. This unification of the Germanic met Carolingian Occident in liaison with the Danes, the Slavic ones of Elba, Avars of the Hungarian plain; the latter are defeated into 796 and their political organization is destroyed. In north, the emperor must face the first Scandinavian raids.

Last sector of intervention, Spain. The will of expansion of Charlemagne pushes it beyond the Pyrenees, into 778; the circumstances are favorable: enough Saxon side; call of small Moslem princes of the north of Spain, in rebellion against the emir de Cordoue. The countryside begin victoriously with the catch from Pampelune, but a rising of Saxon obliges Charles to raise the head office of Saragossa precipitately.

With the return, crossing the Pyrenees with Roncevaux, its rearguard is attacked and destroyed by the Basques (who live the north of Spain and the south of Gascogne, and which Charlemagne never succeeded in subjecting) and by Moslems. The epopee seized, by deforming it, of this event and magnified its protagonists, the Charles emperor and Roland. Annals teach us that Éginhard, the count of the palate, and Roland, prefect of the Steps of Brittany, were killed in this combat. The contemporary texts minimized this fact or overlooked it; however it was a true disaster.

But Charlemagne returns to the load at the end of VIIIe century and succeeds in conquering part of Catalonia on the Moslems: Barcelona is taken into 801.

The restoration of the Western Empire is the major fact of the reign of Charlemagne.

Charlemagne marked hesitations, which can be explained by the existence of several designs of the empire at that time:

A Roman idea, which makes of the emperor the supreme sovereign of the civilized world; but the emperor of the East incarnates already this idea;

A religious idea, according to which the emperor is the temporal chief of a Christian empire, whose true leader is the pope; this idea, if she ignores the emperor of the East, the conflicts between the Churches being permanent, subordinates the emperor to the pope;

An idea in fact, the emperor being that which dominates several kingdoms; it is the case of Charlemagne, but then the imperial title is reduced to a simple dignity which does not bring any addition of power to that which carries it.

The process of restoration of the empire got under way into 798: a riot bursts in Rome against the pope Leon III, whose morality is suspectée. The Supreme Pontiff comes to see Charles with Paderborn and the principle of an intervention in Italy is retained; the idea of a restoration of the empire is probably considered. The council also decides to restore the empire and to prepare the ceremony of the sacring. The ceremonial selected is copied on that of Constantinople, although an important distorsion is brought there: in Constantinople the role of the Byzantine patriarch remains secondary; in Rome, on the other hand, the pope takes the initiative, by crowning Charles “emperor of the Romans”, “to make the emperor”.

According to Éginhard, the newly-elected representative showed himself besides extremely dissatisfied with the course of the ceremony: Charles did not intend to depend on papacy; until its death, Charlemagne will endeavor to correct the direction of this ceremony. On the one hand, while carrying the title of emperor, it preserves his traditional titulature; he is king of the Francs and king of the Lombardic ones: its real power comes from there and not from the imperial title. In addition, little before its death, it crowns in Aix his/her son Louis the Piles, thus meaning with the pope that it does not have to intervene in this very laic ceremony. This design of the empire will not survive Charlemagne, since Louis the Piles will give again with the pope the initiative to make the emperor.

Charlemagne devoted the last years of its life to the organization of this Saint Worsens Roman of Occident which, in spite of its name, was much more Germanic than Mediterranean. Without innovating as regards government it took again the frank uses -, it tried to equip its territories with a coherent and unified official organization. At the central level, it controls with the many courtiers and servants gathered in the “palate”. The most important advisers do not have necessarily titles aulic (i.e. characteristic of the imperial nobility at court); but loads of count of the palates and archichapelain emergent above those, mid--domestic, mid--policies, of bouteiller or chambrier. This palate moves unceasingly, of royal fields in royal fields: the needs for food of the court impose this migration, the political needs also, because in this vast empire the prince must show himself to be obeyed. However, impressed by Ravenne, the old imperial capital, and by Pavia, the Lombardic capital, Charles makes build, from 794, Aachen, where it will more and more often reside after 800.

The decisions taken with the palate are announced at the time of the assemblies and are applied by the administration. It was said, the departure of the army is annually the occasion of a vast meeting of notable, clerks and laic, kingdom: the measurements elaborate and discussed by the assembly are consigned in a legislative text, read with all the free men present: the capitulary one. This text is forwarded to the local staff of the power, and initially to the counts. The count, judges, tax collector of the fines and the indirect taxes (only what exists), and chief of the local military quotas, is the permanent representative of the emperor in one of the three hundred counties which share the empire. Itinerant inspectors, the missi dominici (“sent of the Master”) make rounds to control the counts. Sometimes at the borders, an invested character of military powers holds in hand several counties, which form a walk: he is the duke, or the count, of walk.

The distances and the difficulties from communication, constants to the Middle Ages, and especially particularisms ethnic and the social structure make fragile and not very effective this construction, however coherent. To obviate the disadvantages of particularisms, Charlemagne set up in satellite kingdoms, entrusted to his/her sons, the territories badly compared to the frank world, like Aquitaine or Italy. The obstacle consisted the social structures is more serious: the ground is the only richness and the company is dominated by an aristocracy holder of this richness; under these conditions, a centralized political structure is dedicated to the failure. The count, named and revoked by the emperor, can be remunerated only by the concession of a public ground: counts, and that as of Charlemagne, tend to insert this good in their inheritance and to act with their own way.

To counter these centrifugal forces, Charlemagne uses of various remedies: oath of fidelity imposed all to the free men; use of the ecclesiastical executives to the profit of the State, the bishop holding in his city the role of the count; concessions of diplomas of immunity to the large abbeys; use of the private bonds of dependence, the emperor receiving the homage of many vassal, with which it concedes a ground in usufruct, and obliging the counts to enter his vassalage. In spite of its will and its prestige, Charlemagne could only contain these forces of disintegration, not to control them.

To lay out qualified administrators, Charlemagne supported a revival of the studies and created the School of the palate, which celebrates it Alcuin directed. The religious needs also led it to design a “cultural policy”. This one was conditioned by the religious reform that Charlemagne, council after council, succeed in imposing: liturgical reform, reform of the discipline in the abbeys and cathedral chapters.

Only an educated clergy could allow the success of these reforms; from where the “teaching” measurements, if one can say, taken at the instigation of Charlemagne and its advisers: creation of schools close to the cathedral churches and the monasteries; reform writing, with the adoption of the “tiny Caroline”, simple writing regular, readable. Charlemagne also took part in the theological debates of its time. With the council of Frankfurt (794), it made condemn the iconoclasm and the Spanish adoptianism.

Generally, the emperor encouraged a true dash towards the culture - facilitated by the opening of the empire on areas where the ancient culture had been preserved (Italy, Spain, England, Ireland) -, which allowed, under its reign and that of his/her Louis son Piles, blossoming of a short but brilliant “Carolingian rebirth” in the field of arts and the letters (and which ensured in particular the survival of many Latin manuscripts): the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin, Lombard Paul Deacon, the Théodulf Visigoth, Frank Angilbert contributed to start again the taste for the ancient culture and, in their writings, to restore the Latin language.

The will to imitate Antiquity also marks the artistic rebirth: the architectural decoration, the sculpture are copied on Roman art. But one notes also an opening to the external, Irish influences in the manuscripts with paintings, Byzantines in the decoration with mosaics. Architecture knows a brilliance rise: religious constructions obey the needs for popular piety (large churches, crypts and ambulatories to shelter the relics whose worship is spread) or aristocratic (Germigny, vault of countryside of Théodulf, palatine vault of Aix, designed for the divine service of the palate). The construction of the palates of Aix and Ingelheim testifies to the revival of the civil architecture.

But the late state of the economy, the weakness of the exchanges, the insufficiency of the administration executives and the invasions Normans caused the fast dislocation of a political construction as impressive as transitory, as the emperor had thought besides of dividing between his three sons, before crowning Louis like his heir into 813.

Eginhard, which wrote the history of the reign (Life of Charlemagne), described the emperor like vigorous, very large, bearing a man moustache (and not the beard), dressed simply in the costume of the frank, impassioned warrior of hunting and big eater. Little cultivated itself, Charlemagne could however be surrounded of the best spirits of its time and served the Church with a sincere faith.

After its death in 814, its reign will quickly seem a lost golden age and the legend will seize this character out of the commun run. The figure of Charlemagne, emperor to the flowered beard, from now on mythical survived in the chansons de geste (the Song of Roland, the Song of Saisnes), and the tales of chivalry where it seems the untiring defender of the faith and justice, before taking comic features, at the moment when the royal power yields in front of the feudal expansion (the Pilgrimage of Charlemagne). Frederic Barberousse made canonize in 1165, by the antipope Pascal III, the sovereign who was to remain a model for all European monarchies.