Charles has become known as Charles The Great or Charlemagne for very good reasons. His long reign changed the face of Europe politically and culturally, and he himself would remain fixed in the minds of people in the Middle Ages as the ideal king. In more recent times, many historians have taken his reign to be the beginning of the Middle Ages 'proper'. Yet in terms of territorial expansion and consolidation, of church reform and entanglement with Rome, Charlemagne's reign was merely bringing the policies of his father Pippin to their logical conclusions.

Charlemagne became the subject of the first medieval biography of a layman, written by Einhard, one of his learned courtiers. Following his literary model, Suetonius's word portrait of the Emperor Augustus,
Einhard described Charlemagne's appearance, his dress, his eating and drinking habits, his religious practices and intellectual interests, giving us a vivid if not perhaps entirely reliable picture of the
Frankish monarch. He was strong, tall, and healthy, and ate moderately. He loved excercise: riding and hunting, and perhaps more surprising, swimming. Einhard tells us that he chose Aachen as the site for his palace because of its hot springs, and that he used to bathe there with his family, friends, and courtiers. He spoke and read Latin as well as his native Frankish, and could understand Greek, and
even speak it a little. He learned grammar, rhetoric, amd mathematics from the learned clerics he gathered around him, but although he kept writing-tablets under his pillow for practice (he used to wake up several times in the night) he never mastered the art of writing. It was because he was a tireless and remarkably successful general that he was able to make such a mark upon European history. He
concluded Pippin's wars with Aquitaine, and proclaimed his son Louis as king in 781; the one serious defeat he suffered was in these wars, at Roncevaux in the Pyrenees, a defeat one day immortalized in "The Song of Roland" and later 'chansons de geste'.

He added Saxony to his realm after years of vicious campaigning; and, towards the end of his reign, moving against the Danes; he destroyed the kingdom of the Avars in Hungary; he subdued the Bretons,
the Bavarians, and various Slav people. In the south he began the reconquest of Spain from the Arabs and established the Spanish March in the north-east of the peninsula.But perhaps his most significant campaigns were south of the Alps, in Italy. Pope Hadrian appealed to Charlemagne for help against
Desiderius of the Lombards. The campaign in the winter of 773-4 was short and decisive. Desiderius was exiled, and Charlemagne, "king of the Franks", added "and the Lombards" to his title; later he appointed his son Pepin as King of Italy.

But popes were still not free of all their enemies. In 799 Leo III was ambushed by a rival party of Roman aristocrats, who tried to gouge out his eyes and cut off his tongue. Leo fled to Charlemage, who was at Paderborn preparing for another war against the Saxons. Charlemagne ordered Leo III to be restored and, later in the year 800, came to Rome himself. On Christmas Day, in St. Peter's, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor of the Romans.

Now he was also going to be plagued by dynastic problems. His second wife, Judith, wanting the largest part of the empire for her son, joined forces with Louis's sons, Ludwig the German and Pippin, against Lothar, the eldest son. The results were that two factions developed in the Empire, one wanting to keep the Empire united and the other to continue the Frankish custom of dividing lands between all sons.

In 829 Judith pursuaded Louis the Pious to set aside his settlement of 817 and include Judith's son, Charles, in the partition of the Empire. However, Ludwig the German and Pippin, jealous of
Charles's portion, joined forces with Lothar, their eldest brother and, in 830, rebelled against their father.

The eldest three sons, supported by Pope Gregory IV, defeated their father in 833. Lothar was restored as Emperor designate and Louis the Pious was forced to perform a humiliating penance. However,
Ludwig the German and Pippin were still dissatisfied and again took up arms. In 838 Pippin died followed, in 840, by Louis the Pious; but it took until 843 when, at Verdun, the Frankish tradition triumphed and the Empire was divided between the three surviving sons.
 

Source: Leo van de Pas