These bore each other little love; but fortunately the former died (771) before an open breach occurred. So Charles was left to rule alone, and prove himself, all things considered, the greatest of mediaeval sovereigns. Having fought his many wars of conquest and subjugation against Saracens, Saxons, Avars, Bavarians, Slavs, Danes, Lombards; having conquered much of Italy and freed the Pope from neighbouring domination; having been crowned and anointed emperor in the year 800; having restored letters, uplifted the Church, issued much wise legislation, and Christianized with iron hand the stubborn heathen; and above all, having administered his vast realm with never-failing energy, he died in 814—just one hundred years after the time when his grandfather Charles was left to fight so doughtily for life and power.
Poetry and history have conspired to raise the fame of Charlemagne. In more than one chanson de geste, the old French épopée has put his name where that of Pippin, Charles Martell, or perhaps that of some Merovingian should have been.[1] Sober history has not thus falsified its matter, and yet has over-dramatized the incidents of its hero's reign. For example, every schoolboy has been told of the embassy to Charlemagne from Harun al Raschid, Caliph of Bagdad. But not so many schoolboys know that Pippin had sent an embassy to a previous caliph, which was courteously entertained for three years in Bagdad;[2] and Pippin, like his son, received embassies from the Greek emperor. The careers of Charles Martell and Pippin have not been ignored; and yet historical convention has focused its attention and its phrases upon "the age of Charlemagne." One should not forget that this exceedingly great man stood upon the shoulders of the great men to whose achievement he succeeded.
Neither politically, socially, intellectually, nor geographically[3] was there discontinuity or break or sudden change between the Merovingian and the Carolingian
- ↑ E.g. Charles Martell and Pippin drove the Saracens from Narbonne—not Charlemagne, to whom these chansons ascribe the deed.
- ↑ The dates are 801 and 765.
- ↑ Historical atlases usually devote a double map to the Empire of Charlemagne, and little side-maps to the Merovingian realm, which included vast German territories, and for a time extended into Italy.
