Just before his death Pepin the Short had divided his lands between his two sons, Charles, who was about twenty-six, and Carloman, a youth some years younger. As they had no affection for each other, this division did not work well. Carloman gave little promise of statesmanlike qualities: he was peevish and jealous, and easily persuaded by the nobles who surrounded him that his elder brother was a rival who intended to rob him of his possessions, it might be of his life. There seems to have been no ground for this suspicion; but nevertheless he spent his days in trying to hinder whatever schemes Charles proposed; and when he died, three years later, there was a general breath of relief.

Enumerating the blessings that Heaven had bestowed on Charlemagne, a monk, writing to the King about this time, completed his list with the candid statement: ‘the fifth and not least that God has removed your brother from this earthly kingdom’.

Charlemagne was exactly the kind of person to seize the fancy of the early Middle Ages. Tall and well built, with an eagle nose and eyes that flashed like a lion when he was angry so that none dared to meet their gaze, he excelled all his court in strength, energy, and skill. He could straighten out with his fingers four horseshoes locked together, lift a warrior fully equipped for battle to the level of his shoulder, and fell a horse and its rider with a single blow.

It was his delight to keep up old national customs and to wear the Frankish dress with its linen tunic, cross-gartered leggings, and long mantle reaching to the feet. ‘What is the use of these rags?’ he once inquired contemptuously of his courtiers, pointing to their short cloaks—‘Will they cover me in bed, or shield me from the wind and rain when I ride abroad?’

This criticism was characteristic of the King. Intent on a multitude of schemes for the extension or improvement of his lands, and so eager to realize them that he would start on fresh ones when still heavily encumbered with the old, he was yet, for all his enthusiasm, no vague dreamer but a level-headed man looking questions in the face and demanding a practical answer.

By the irony of fate it is the least practical and important task he undertook that has made his name world-famous; for the story of Charlemagne and his Paladins, told in that greatest of mediaeval epics, the Chanson de Roland, exceeds to-day in popularity even the exploits of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. This much is history—that Charlemagne, invited secretly by some discontented Emirs to invade Spain and attack the Caliph of Cordova, crossed the Pyrenees, and, after reducing several towns successfully, was forced to retreat. On his way back across the mountains his rearguard was cut off by Gascon mountaineers, and slaughtered almost to a man; while he and the rest of his army escaped with difficulty.

On this meagre and rather inglorious foundation poets of the eleventh century based a cycle of romance. Charlemagne is the central figure, but round him are grouped numerous ‘Paladins’, or famous knights, including the inseparable friends Oliver and Roland, Warden of the Breton Marches. After numerous deeds of glory in the land of Spain, the King, it was said, was forced by treachery to turn back towards the French mountains, and had already passed the summits, when Roland, in charge of the rearguard, found himself entrapped in the Pass of Roncesvalles by a large force of Gascons. His horn was slung at his side but he disdained to summon help from those in the van, and drawing his good sword ‘Durenda’ laid about him valiantly.

The Gascons fell back, dismayed by the vigorous resistance of the French; but thirty thousand Saracens came to their aid, and the odds were now overwhelming. Oliver lay dead, and, covered with wounds, Roland fell to the ground also, but first of all he broke ‘Durenda’ in half that none save he might use this peerless blade. Putting his horn to his lips, with his dying breath he sounded a blast that was heard by Charlemagne in his camp more than eight miles away. ‘Surely that is the horn of Roland?’ cried the King uneasily, but treacherous courtiers explained away the sound; and it was not till a breathless messenger came with the news of the reverse that he hastened towards the scene of battle. There in the pass, stretched on the ground amid the heaped-up bodies of their enemies, he found his Paladins—Roland with his arms spread in the form of a cross, his broken sword beside him: and seeing him the King fell on his knees weeping. ‘Oh, right arm of thy Sovereign’s body, Honour of the Franks, Sword of Justice.... Why did I leave thee here to perish? How can I behold thee dead and not die with thee?’ At last, restraining his grief, Charlemagne gathered his forces together; and the very sun, we are told, stood still to watch his terrible vengeance on Gascons and Saracens for the slaughter of Christians at Roncesvalles.

The Chanson de Roland is one of the masterpieces of French literature. It is not history, but in its fiction lies a substantial germ of truth. Charlemagne in the early ninth century was what poets described him more than two hundred years later—the central figure in Christendom, the recognized champion of the Cross whether against Mahometans or pagans. ‘Through your prosperity’, wrote Alcuin, an Anglo-Saxon monk and scholar who lived at his court, ‘Christendom is preserved, the Catholic Faith defended, the law of justice made known to all men.’

When the Popes sought help against the Lombards, it was to Charlemagne as to his father Pepin that they naturally turned. Charlemagne had hoped at the beginning of his reign to maintain a friendship with King Didier of Lombardy and had even married his daughter, an alliance that roused the Pope of that date to demand in somewhat violent language: ‘Do you not know that all the children of the Lombards are lepers, that the race is outcast from the family of nations? For these there is neither part nor lot in the Heavenly Kingdom. May they broil with the devil and his angels in everlasting fire!’

Charlemagne went his own way, in spite of papal denunciations; but he soon tired of his bride, who was plain and feeble in health, and divorced her that he might marry a beautiful German princess. This was, of course, a direct insult to King Didier, who henceforth regarded the Frankish king as his enemy; and Rome took care that the gulf once made between the sovereigns should not be bridged.

In papal eyes the Lombards had really become accursed. It is true that they had been since the days of Gregory the Great orthodox Catholics, that their churches were some of the most beautiful in Italy, their monasteries the most famous for learning, and Pavia, their capital, a centre for students and men of letters. Their sin did not lie in heretical views, but in the position of their kingdom that now included not only modern Lombardy in the north, but also the Duchy of Spoletum in South Italy. Between stretched the papal dominions like a broad wall from Ravenna to the Western Mediterranean; and on either side the Lombards chafed, trying to annex a piece of land here or a city there, while the Popes watched them, lynx-eyed, eager on their part to dispossess such dangerous neighbours, but unable to do so without assistance from beyond the Alps.

Soon after the death of his younger brother Charlemagne was persuaded to take up the papal cause and invade Italy. At Geneva, where he held the ‘Mayfield’ or annual military review of his troops, he laid the object of his campaign before them, and was answered by their shouts of approval.

It was a formidable host, for the Franks expected every man who owned land in their dominions to appear at these gatherings prepared for war. The rich would be mounted, protected by mail shirts and iron headpieces, and armed with sword and dagger; the poor would come on foot, some with bows and arrows, others with lance and shield, and the humblest of all with merely scythes or wooden clubs. Tenants on the royal demesnes must bring with them all the free men on their estates; and while it was possible to obtain exemption the fine demanded was so heavy that few could pay it.

When the army set out in battle array, it was accompanied by numerous baggage-carts, lumbering wagons covered with leather awnings, that contained enough food for three months as well as extra clothes and weapons. It was the general hope that on the return journey the wagons would be filled to overflowing with the spoils of the conquered enemy.

The Lombards had ceased, with the growth of luxury and comfortable town life, to be warriors like the Franks; and Charlemagne met with almost as little resistance as Pepin in past campaigns. After a vain attempt to hold the Western passes of the Alps, Didier and his army fled to Pavia, where they fortified themselves, leaving the rest of the country at the mercy of the invaders. Frankish chroniclers in later years drew a realistic picture of Didier, crouched in one of the high towers of the city, awaiting in trembling suspense the coming of the ‘terrible Charles’. Beside him stood Otger, a Frankish duke, who had been a follower of the dead Carloman and was therefore hostile to his elder brother. ‘Is Charles in that great host?’ demanded the King continually, as first the long line of baggage-wagons came winding across the plain, and then an army of the ‘common-folk’, and after them the bishops with their train of abbots and clerks. Every time his companion answered him, ‘No! not yet!’

‘Then Didier hated the light of day. He stammered and sobbed and said, “Let us go down and hide in the earth from so terrible a foe.” And Otger too was afraid; well he knew the might and the wrath of the peerless Charles; in his better days he had often been at court. And he said, “When you see the plain bristle with a harvest of spears, and rivers of black steel come pouring in upon your city walls, then you may look for the coming of Charles.” While he yet spoke a black cloud arose in the West and the glorious daylight was turned to darkness. The Emperor came on; a dawn of spears darker than night rose on the beleaguered city. King Charles, that man of iron, appeared; iron his helmet, iron his armguards, iron the corselet on his breast and shoulders. His left hand grasped an iron lance ... iron the spirit, iron the hue of his war steed. Before, behind, and at his side rode men arrayed in the same guise. Iron filled the plain and open spaces, iron points flashed back the sunlight. “There is the man whom you would see,” said Otger to the king; and so saying he swooned away, like one dead.’

In spite of this picture of Carolingian might, it took the Franks six months to reduce Pavia; and then Didier, at last surrendering, was sent to a monastery, while Charlemagne proclaimed himself king of the newly acquired territories. During the siege, leaving capable generals to conduct it, he himself had gone to Rome, where he was received with feasting and joy. Crowds of citizens came out to the gates to welcome him, carrying palms and olive-branches, and hailed him as ‘Patrician’ and ‘Defender of the Church’. Dismounting from his horse he passed on foot through the streets of Rome to the cathedral; and there, in the manner of the ordinary pilgrim, climbed the steps on his knees, until the Pope awaiting him at the top, raised and embraced him. From the choir arose the exultant shout, ‘Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.’

A few days later, once more standing in St. Peter’s, Charlemagne affixed his seal to the donation Pepin had given to the Church. The document was entered amongst the papal archives; but it has long since disappeared, and with it exact information as to the territories concerned.

About this time the papal court produced another document, the so-called ‘Donation of Constantine’, in which the first of the Christian emperors apparently granted to the Popes the western half of the Roman Empire. Centuries later this was proved to be a forgery, but for a long while people accepted it as genuine, and the power of the Popes was greatly increased. We do not know how much Charles believed in papal supremacy in temporal matters; but throughout his reign his attitude to the Pope over Italian affairs was rather that of master to servant than the reverse. It was only when spiritual questions were under discussion that he was prepared to yield as if to a higher authority.

When he had reduced Pavia Charlemagne left Lombardy to be ruled by one of his sons and returned to France; but it was not very long before he was called back to Italy, as fresh trouble had arisen there. The cause was the unpopularity of Pope Leo III in Rome and the surrounding country, where turbulent nobles rebelled as often as they could against the papal government. One day, as Leo was riding through the city at the head of a religious procession, a band of armed men rushed out from a side street, separated him from his attendants, dragged him from his horse, and beat him mercilessly, leaving him half dead. It was even said that they put out his eyes and cut off his tongue, but that these were later restored by a miracle.

Leo, at any rate, whole though shaken, succeeded in reaching Charlemagne’s presence, and the King was faced by the problem of going to Rome to restore order. Had it been merely a matter of exacting vengeance, he would have found little difficulty with his army of stalwart Franks behind him; but Leo’s enemies were not slow in bringing forward accusations against their victim that they claimed justified their assault. Charlemagne was thus in an awkward position, for he was too honest a ruler to refuse to hear both sides, and his respect for the papal office could not blind him to the possibility of evil in the acts of the person who held it, especially in the case of an ambitious statesman like Leo III.

He felt that it was his duty to sift the matter to the bottom; and yet by what law could the King of France or even of Italy put Christ’s vice-regent upon his trial and cross-examine him?

One way of dealing with this problem would have been to seek judgement at Constantinople as the seat of Empire, a final ‘appeal unto Caesar’ such as St. Paul had made in classical times: but, ever since Pepin the Short had given the Exarchate of Ravenna to the Pope instead of restoring it to Byzantine Emperors, relations with the East, never cordial, had grown more strained. Now they were at breaking point. The late Emperor, a mere boy, had been thrown into a dungeon and blinded by his mother, the Empress Irene, in order that she might usurp his throne; and the Western Empire recoiled from the idea of accepting such a woman as arbiter of their destinies.

Thus Charlemagne, forced to act on his own responsibility, examined the evidence laid before him and declared Leo innocent of the crimes of which he had been accused. In one sense it was a complete triumph for the Pope; but Leo was a clear-sighted statesman and knew that the power to which he had been restored rested on a weak foundation. The very fact that he had been compelled to appeal for justice to a temporal sovereign lowered the office that he held in the eyes of the world; and he possessed no guarantee that, once the Franks had left Rome, his enemies would not again attack him. Without a recognized champion, always ready to enforce her will, the Papacy remained at the mercy of those who chose to oppose or hinder her.

In the dramatic scene that took place in St. Peter’s Cathedral on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, Leo found a way out of his difficulties. Arrayed in gorgeous vestments, he said Mass before the High Altar, lit by a thousand candles hanging at the arched entrance to the chancel. In the half-gloom beyond knelt Charlemagne and his sons; and at the end of the service Leo, approaching them with a golden crown in his hands, placed it upon the King’s head. Instantly the congregation burst into the cry with which Roman emperors of old had been acclaimed at their accession. ‘To Charles Augustus, crowned of God, the great and pacific Emperor, long life and victory!’ ‘From that time’, says a Frankish chronicle, commenting on this scene, ‘there was no more a Roman Empire at Constantinople.’

Leo had found his champion, and in anointing and crowning him had emphasized the dignity of his own office. He had also pleased the citizens of Rome, who rejoiced to have an Emperor again after the lapse of more than three centuries. Charlemagne alone was doubtful of the greatness that had been thrust upon him and accepted it with reluctance. He had troubles enough near home without embroiling himself with Constantinople; but as it turned out the Eastern Empire was too busy deposing the Empress Irene to object actively to its rejection in the West; and Irene’s successors agreed to acknowledge the imperial rank of their rival in return for the cession of certain coveted lands on the Eastern Adriatic.

Other sovereigns hastened to pay their respects to the new Emperor, and Charlemagne received several embassies in search of alliance from Haroun al-Raschid, the Caliph of Bagdad. Haroun al-Raschid ruled over a mighty empire stretching from Persia to Egypt, and thence along the North African coast to the Strait of Gibraltar. On one occasion he sent Charlemagne a present of a wonderful water-clock that, as it struck the hour of twelve, opened as many windows, through which armed horsemen rode forth and back again. Far more exciting in Western eyes was the unhappy elephant that for nine years remained the glory of the imperial court at Aachen. Its death, when they were about to lead it forth on an expedition against the northern tribes of Germany, is noted sadly in the national annals.

Rulers less fortunate than Haroun al-Raschid sought not so much the friendship of the Western Emperor as his protection, and through his influence exiled kings of Wessex and Northumberland were able to recover their thrones. Most significant tribute of all to the honour in which Charlemagne’s name was held was the petition of the Patriarch of Jerusalem that he would come and rescue Christ’s city from the infidel. The message was accompanied by a banner and the keys of the Holy Sepulchre; but Charlemagne, though deeply moved by such a call to the defence of Christendom, knew that the campaign was beyond his power and put it from him. Were there not infidels to be subdued within the boundaries of his own Empire, fierce Saxon tribes that year after year made mock both of the sovereignty of the Franks and their religion?

The Saxons lived amongst the ranges of low hills between the Rhine and the Elbe. By the end of the eighth century, when other Teutonic races such as the Franks and the Bavarians had yielded to the civilizing influence of Christianity, they still cherished their old beliefs in the gods of nature and offered sacrifices to spirits dwelling in groves and fountains. The chief object of their worship was a huge tree trunk that they kept hidden in the heart of a forest, their priests declaring that the whole Heavens rested upon it. This Irminsul, or ‘All-supporting pillar’, was the bond between one group of Saxons and another that led them to rally round their chiefs when any foreign army appeared on their soil; though, if at peace with the rest of the world, they would fight amongst themselves for sheer love of battle.

A part of the Saxon race had settled in the island of Britain, when the Roman authority weakened at the break-up of the Empire; and amongst the descendants of these settlers were some Christian priests who determined to carry the Gospel to the heathen tribes of Germany, men and women of their own race but still living in spiritual darkness. The most famous of these missionaries was St. Winifrith, or St. Boniface according to the Latin version of his name that means, ‘He who brings peace.’

About the time that Charles Martel was Duke of the Franks Boniface arrived in Germany and began to travel from one part of the country to another, explaining the Gospel of Christ, and persuading those whom he converted to build churches and monasteries. When he went to Rome to give an account of his work the Pope made him a bishop and sent him to preach in the Duchy of Bavaria. Later, as his influence increased and he gathered disciples round him, he was able to found not only parish churches but bishoprics with a central archbishopric at Mainz; thus, long before Germany became a nation she possessed a Church with an organized government that belonged not to one but to all her provinces.

Only in the north and far east of Germany heathenism still held sway; and St. Boniface, after he had gone at the Pope’s wish to help the Franks reform their Church, determined to make one last effort to complete his missionary work in the land he had chosen as his own. He was now sixty-five, but nothing daunted by the hardships and dangers of the task before him he set off with a few disciples to Friesland and began to preach to the wild pagan tribes who lived there. Before he could gain a hearing, however, he was attacked, and, refusing to defend himself, was put to death.

Thus passed away ‘the Apostle of Germany’ and with him much of the kindliness of his message. Christianity was to come indeed to these northern tribes, but through violence and the sword rather than by the influence of a gentle life. Charlemagne had a sincere love of the Catholic Faith, whose champion he believed himself; but he considered that only folly and obstinacy could blind men’s eyes to the truth of Christianity, and he was determined to enforce its doctrines by the sword if necessary.

The Saxons, on the other hand, though if they were beaten in battle they might yield for a time and might promise to pay tribute to the Franks and build churches, remained heathens at heart. When an opportunity occurred, and they learned that the greater part of the Frankish army was in Italy or on the Spanish border, they would sally forth across their boundaries and drive out or kill the missionaries. Charlemagne knew that he could have no peace within his Empire until he had subdued the Saxons; but the task he had set himself was harder than he had imagined, and it was thirty-eight years before he could claim that he had succeeded.

‘The final conquest of the Saxons’, says Eginhard, a scholar who lived at Charlemagne’s court and wrote his life, ‘would have been accomplished sooner but for their treachery. It is hard to tell how often they broke faith, surrendering to the King and accepting his terms, and then breaking out into wild rebellion once more.’ Eginhard continues that Charlemagne’s method was never to allow a revolt to remain unpunished but to set out at once with an army and exact vengeance. On one of these campaigns he succeeded in reaching the forest where the sacred trunk Irminsul was kept and set fire to it and destroyed it; but the Saxons, though disheartened for the moment, soon rallied under the banner of a famous chief called Witikind. We know little of the latter except his undaunted courage that made him refuse for many years to submit to a foe so much stronger that he must obviously gain the final victory.

Charlemagne, exasperated by repeated opposition, used every means to forward his aim. Sometimes he would bribe separate chieftains to betray their side; but often he would employ methods of deliberate cruelty in order to strike terror into his foes. Four thousand five hundred Saxons who had started a rebellion were once cut off and captured by the Franks. They pleaded that Witikind, who had escaped into Denmark, had prompted them to act against their better judgement. ‘If Witikind is not here you must pay the penalty in his stead,’ returned the King relentlessly, and the whole number were put to the sword.

At different times he transplanted hundreds of Saxon households into the heart of France, and in the place of ‘this great multitude’, as the chronicle describes them, he established Frankish garrisons. He also sent missionaries to build churches in the conquered territories and compelled the inhabitants to become Christians.

Often the bishops and priests thus sent would have to fly before a sudden raid of heathen Saxons hiding in the neighbouring forests and marshes; and, lacking the courage of St. Boniface, a few would hesitate to return when the danger was suppressed. ‘What ought I to do?’ cried one of the most timid, appealing to Charlemagne. ‘In Christ’s name go back to thy diocese,’ was the stern answer.

While the King expected the same obedience and devotion from church officials as from the captains in his army, he took care that they should not lack his support in the work he had set them to do.

‘If any man among the Saxons, being not yet baptized, shall hide himself and refuse to come to baptism, let him die the death.’

‘If any man despise the Lenten fast for contempt of Christianity, let him die the death.’

‘Let all men, whether nobles, free, or serfs, give to the Churches and the priests the tenth part of their substance and labour.’

These ‘capitularies’, or laws, show that Charlemagne was still half a barbarian at heart and matched pagan savagery with a severity more ruthless because it was more calculating. In the end Witikind himself, in spite of his courage, was forced to surrender and accept baptism, and gradually the whole of Saxony fell under the Frankish yoke.

The Duchy of Bavaria, that had been Christian for many years, did not offer nearly so stubborn a resistance; and after he had reduced both it and Saxony to submission, Charlemagne was ruler not merely in name but in reality of an Empire that included France, the modern Holland and Belgium, Germany, and the greater part of Italy. Some of the conquests he had made were to fall away, but Germany that had suffered most at his hands emerged in the end the greatest achievement of his foreign wars.

wrote a Saxon monk of the ninth century, showing that already some of the bitterness had vanished. ‘In a few generations’, says a modern writer, ‘the Saxons were conspicuous for their loyalty to the Faith.’

No story of Charlemagne would be true to life that omitted his harsh dealings with his Saxon foe; and yet it would be equally unfair to paint him only as a warrior, mercilessly exterminating all who opposed him in barbaric fashion. Far more than a conqueror he was an empire-builder to whom war was not an end in itself, as to his Frankish forefathers, but a means towards the safeguarding of his realm.

The forts and outworks that he planted along his boundaries, the churches that he built in the midst of hostile territory, belonged indeed to his policy of inspiring terror and awe: but Charlemagne had also other designs only in part of a military nature. Roads and bridges that should make a network of communication across the Empire, acting like channels of civilization in assisting transport and encouraging trade and intercourse: royal palaces that should become centres of justice for the surrounding country: monasteries that should shed the light of knowledge and of faith: all these formed part of his dream of a Roman Empire brought back to her old stately life and power.

A canal joining the Rhine and Danube and thus making a continuous waterway between East and West was planned and even begun, but had to wait till modern times for its completion. Charlemagne possessed the vision and enterprise that did not quail before big undertakings, but he lacked the money and labour necessary for carrying them out. Unlike the Roman Emperors of classic times he had no treasury on whose taxes he could draw; but depended, save for certain rents, on the revenues of his private estates that were usually paid ‘in kind’, that is to say, not in coin but at the rate of so many head of cattle, or of so much milk, corn, or barley, according to the means of the tenant. Of these supplies he kept a careful account even to the number of hens on the royal farms and the quantity of eggs that they laid. Yet at their greatest extent revenues ‘in kind’ could do little more than satisfy the daily needs of the palace.

The chief debt that the Frankish nation owed to the state was not financial but military, the obligation of service in the field laid on every freeman. As the Empire increased in size this became so irksome that the system was somewhat modified. In future men who possessed less than a certain quantity of land might join together and pay one or two of their number, according to the size of their joint properties, to represent them in the army abroad, while the rest remained at home to see to the cultivation of the crops.

Charlemagne was very anxious to raise a body of labourers from each district to assist in his building schemes, but this suggestion awoke a storm of indignation. Landowners maintained that they were only required by law to repair the roads and bridges in their own neighbourhood, not to put their tenants at the disposal of the Emperor that he might send them at his whim from Aquitaine to Bavaria, or from Austria to Lombardy; and in face of this opposition many of his designs ceased abruptly from lack of labour. A royal palace and cathedral, adorned with columns and mosaics from Ravenna, were, however, completed at Aachen; and here Charlemagne established his principal residence and gathered his court round him.

The life of this ‘new Rome’, as he loved to call it, was simple in the extreme; for the Emperor, like a true Frank, hated unnecessary ostentation and ceremony. When the chief nobles and officials assembled twice a year in the spring and autumn to debate on public matters, he would receive them in person, thanking them for the gifts they had brought him, and walking up and down amongst them to jest with one and ask questions of another with an informality that would have scandalized the court at Constantinople.

In this easy intercourse between sovereign and subject lay the secret of Charlemagne’s personal magnetism. To warriors and churchmen as to officials and the ordinary freemen of his demesnes he was not some far-removed authority, who could be approached only through a maze of court intrigue, but a man like themselves with virtues and failings they could understand.

If his temper was hasty and terrible when roused, it would soon melt away into a genial humour that appreciated to the full the rough practical jokes in which the age delighted. The chronicles tell us with much satisfaction how Charlemagne once persuaded a Jew to offer a ‘vainglorious bishop ever fond of vanities’ a painted mouse that he pretended he had brought back straight from Judea. The bishop at first declined to give more than £3 for such a treasure; but, deceived by the Jew’s prompt refusal to part with it for so paltry a sum, consented at length to hand over a bushel of silver in exchange. The Emperor, hearing this, gathered the rest of the bishops at his court together—‘See what one of you has paid for a mouse!’ he exclaimed gleefully; and we may be sure that the story did not stop at the royal presence but spread throughout the country, where haughty ecclesiastics were looked on with little favour.

We are told also that Charlemagne loved to bombard the people he met, from the Pope downwards, with difficult questions; but it was not merely a malicious desire to bring them to confusion that prompted his inquiries. Alert himself, and keenly interested in whatever business he had in hand, he despised slipshod or inefficient knowledge. He expected a bishop to be an authority on theology, an official to be an expert on methods of government, a scholar to be well grounded in the ordinary sciences of his day.

Hard work was the surest road to his favour, and he spared neither himself nor those who entered his service. Even at night he would place writing materials beneath his pillow that if he woke or thought of anything it might be noted down. On one occasion he visited the palace school that he had founded, and discovered that while the boys of humble birth were making the most of their opportunities, the sons of the nobles, despising book-learning, had frittered away their time. Commending those who had done well, the Emperor turned to the others with an angry frown. ‘Relying on your birth and wealth,’ he exclaimed, ‘and caring nothing for our commands and your own improvement, you have neglected the study of letters and have indulged yourselves in pleasures and idleness.... By the King of Heaven I care little for your noble birth.... Know this, unless straightway you make up for your former negligence by earnest study, you need never expect any favour from the hand of Charles.’

It was with the wealthy nobles and landowners that Charlemagne fought some of his hardest battles, though no sword was drawn or open war declared. Not only were most of the high offices at court in their hands, but it was from their ranks that the counts, and later the viscounts, were chosen who ruled over the districts into which the Empire was divided and subdivided.

The count received a third of the gifts and rents from his province that would have otherwise been paid to the King; and these, if he were unscrupulous, he could increase at the expense of those he governed. He presided in the local law-courts and was responsible for the administration of justice, the exaction of fines, and for the building of roads and bridges. He was in fact a petty king, and would often tyrannize over the people and neglect the royal interests to forward his selfish ambitions.

The Merovingians had tried to limit the authority of the counts and other provincial officials by occasionally sending private agents of their own to inquire into the state of the provinces and to reform the abuses that they found. Charlemagne adopted this practice as a regular system; and at the annual assemblies he appointed Missi, or ‘messengers’, who should make a tour of inspection in the district to which they had been sent at least four times in the year and afterwards report on their progress to the Emperor. Wherever they went the count or viscount must yield up his authority to them for the time being, allowing them to sit in his court and hear all the grievances and complaints that the men and women of the district cared to bring forward. If the Missi insisted on certain reforms the count must carry them out and also make atonement for any charges proved against him.

Here are some of the evils that the men of Istria, a province on the Eastern Adriatic, suffered at the hands of their lord, ‘Johannes’, and that the inquiries of the royal Missi at length brought to light. Johannes had sold the people on his estates as serfs to his sons and daughters: he had forced them to build houses for his family and to go voyages on his business across the sea to Venice and Ravenna: he had seized the common land and used it as his own, bringing in Slavs from across the border to till it for his private use: he had robbed his tenants of their horses and their money on the plea of the Emperor’s service and had given them nothing in exchange. ‘If the Emperor will help us,’ they cried, ‘we may be saved, but if not we had better die than live.’

From this account we can see that Charlemagne appeared to the mass of his subjects as their champion against the tyranny of the nobles, and in this sense his government may be called popular; but the old ‘popular’ assemblies of the Franks at which the laws were made had ceased by this reign to be anything but aristocratic gatherings summoned to approve of the measures laid before them.

The Emperor’s ‘capitularies’ would be based on the advice he had received from his most trusted Missi; and when they had been discussed by the principal nobles, they would be read to the general assembly and ratified by a formal acceptance that meant nothing, because it rarely or never was changed into a refusal.

Besides introducing new legislation in the form of royal edicts or capitularies, Charlemagne commanded that a collection should be made of all the old tribal laws, such as the Salic Law of the Franks, and of the chief codes that had been handed down by tradition, or word of mouth, for generations; and this compilation was revised and brought up to date. It was a very useful and necessary piece of work, yet Charlemagne for all his industry does not deserve to be ranked as a great lawgiver like Justinian. The very earnestness of his desire to secure immediate justice made his capitularies hasty and inadequate. He would not wait to trace some evil to its root and then try to eradicate it, but would pass a number of laws on the matter, only touching the surface of what was wrong and creating confusion by the multiplicity of instructions and the contradictions they contained.

Sometimes the Missi themselves were not a success, but would take bribes from the rich landowners on their tour of inspection, and this would mean more government machinery and fresh laws to bring them under the royal control in their turn. If it was difficult to make wise laws, it was even harder in that rough age to carry them out; for the nobles found it to their interest to defy or at least hinder an authority that struck at their power; while the mass of the people were too ignorant to bear responsibility, and few save those educated in the palace schools could become trustworthy ‘counts’ or royal agents.

Dimly, however, the nation understood that the Emperor held some high ideal of government planned for their prosperity, ‘No one cried out to him’, says the chronicle, ‘but straightway he should have good justice’: and in every church throughout France those who had not been called to follow him to battle prayed for his safety and that God would subdue the barbarians before his triumphant arms.

To Charlemagne there was a higher vision than that of mere victory in battle, a vision born of his favourite book, the Civitas Dei, wherein St. Augustine had described the perfect Emperor, holding his sceptre as a gift God had given and might take away, and conquering his enemies that he might lead them to a greater knowledge and prosperity.

Charlemagne believed that to him had been entrusted the guardianship of the Catholic Church, not only from the heathen without its pale, but from false doctrine and evil living within. To the Pope, as Christ’s vice-regent, he bore himself humbly, as on the day when he had climbed St. Peter’s steps on his knees, but to the Pope as a man dealing with other men he spoke as a lord to his vassal, tendering his views and expecting compliance, in return for which he guaranteed the support of his sword.

‘May the ruler of the Church be rightly ruled by thee, O King, and may’st thou be ruled by the right hand of the Almighty!’ In this prayer Alcuin probably expressed the Emperor’s opinion of his own position. Leo III, on the other hand, preferred to talk of his champion as a faithful son of the mother Church of Rome; thereby implying that the Emperor should pay a son’s duty of obedience: but he himself was never in a strong enough position to enforce this point of view, and the clash of Empire and Papacy was left for a later age.

Within his own dominions Charlemagne, like the Frankish kings before him, reigned supreme over the Church, appointing whom he would as bishops, and using them often as Missi to assist him in his government. Yet the Church remained an ‘estate’ apart from the rest of the nation, supported by the revenues of the large sees belonging to the different bishoprics and by the tithe, or tenth part of a layman’s income. When churchmen attended the annual assembly they were allowed to deliberate apart from the nobles and freemen: when a bishop excommunicated some heretic or sinner, the Emperor’s court was bound to enforce the sentence. Thus the privileges and rights were many; but Charlemagne determined that the men who enjoyed them must also fulfil the obligations that they carried with them.

In earlier years Charles Martel and St. Boniface had struggled hard to raise the character of the Frankish Church, and Charlemagne continued their task with his usual energy, insisting on frequent inspections of the monasteries and convents and on the maintenance of a stricter rule of life within their walls.

The ordinary parish clergy were also brought under more vigilant supervision. In accordance with the laws of the Roman Church they were not allowed to marry, nor might they take part in any worldly business, enter a tavern, carry arms, or go hunting or hawking. Above all they were encouraged to educate themselves that they might be able to teach their parishioners and set a good example.

‘Good works are better than knowledge’, wrote Charlemagne to his bishops and abbots in a letter of advice, ‘but without knowledge good works are impossible.’ In accordance with this view he commanded that a school should be established in every diocese, in order that the boys of the neighbourhood might receive a grounding in the ordinary education of their day. His own court became a centre of learning; for he himself was keenly interested in all branches of knowledge, from a close study of the Scriptures to mathematics or tales of distant lands. Histories he liked to have read out to him at meals. Eginhard, his biographer, tells us that he never learned to write, but that he was proficient in Latin and could understand Greek.

It was his desire to emulate Augustus, the first of the Roman Emperors, and gather round him the most literary men of Europe, and he eagerly welcomed foreign scholars and took them into his service. Chief amongst these adopted sons of the Empire was Alcuin the Northumbrian, a ‘wanderer on the face of the earth’ as he called himself, whom Danish invasions had driven from his native land.

Alcuin settled at the Frankish court, organized the ‘palace school’ of which we have already made mention, and himself wrote the primers from which the boys were taught. His influence soon extended beyond this sphere, and he became the Emperor’s chief adviser, inspiring his master with high ideals, while he himself was stirred by the other’s vivid personality to share his passion for hard work.

It is this almost volcanic energy that gives the force and charm to Charlemagne’s many-sided character. We think of him first, it may be, as the warrior, the hero of romance, or else as a statesman planning his Empire of the West. At another time we see in him the guardian of his people, the king who ‘wills that justice should be done’, but we recall a story such as that of the painted mouse, and instantly his simple, almost schoolboy, side becomes apparent. The ‘Great Charles’ was no saint but a Frank of the rough type of soldiers he led to battle, capable of cruelty as of kindness, hot-tempered, a lover of sport, strong perhaps where his ideals were at stake, but weak towards women, and an over-indulgent father, who let the intrigues of his daughters bring scandal on his court. Yet another contrast to this homely figure is the scholar and theologian, the friend of Alcuin, who believed that without knowledge good works were impossible.

Many famous characters in history have equalled or surpassed Charlemagne as general, statesman, or legislator—there have been better scholars and more refined princes—but few or none have followed such divers aims and achieved by the sheer force of their personality such memorable results. Painters and chroniclers love to depict him in old age still majestic; and in truth up till nearly the end of his long reign he kept the fire and vigour of his youth, swimming like a boy in the baths of Aachen, or hunting the wild boar upon the hills, drawing up capitularies, or dictating advice to his bishops, doing, in fact, whatever came to hand with an intensity that would have exhausted any one less healthy and self-reliant.

Fortunately for Charlemagne he had the sturdy constitution of his race, and when at last he died an old man in 814 people believed that he did not share the common fate of humanity. Nearly two hundred years later, it was said, when the funeral vault was opened, he was found seated in his chair of state, firm of flesh as in life, with his crown on his snowy hair, and his sword clasped in his hand.

‘Our Lord gave this boon to Charlemagne that men should speak of him as long as the world endureth.’ It is a boast that as centuries pass, sweeping away the memory of lesser heroes, time still justifies.

Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.