(aka Carolus Magnus, Charles the Great)

(742-814) King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor

Charlemagne [SHAR luh mayn] was born on April 2, 742, the son of Pepin the Short, and the grandson of Charles Martel.

King of the Franks, 768-814

In September 768, Pepin the Short, by now an old man, made a partition of his dominions between his two sons, Charlemagne and Carloman. Not many days later the king passed away. Charlemagne shared Pepin's kingdom with his brother until Carloman's death on December 4, 771, at which time he assumed control of the entire Frankish realm.

Conquest of Lombardy

In 770, Charlemagne married the daughter of Desiderius, King of the Lombards. But in 771 he repudiated the Lombard princess and married Hildegarde, a Suabian lady, who became the mother of his three legitimate sons, Charles, Pepin and Lewis. Desiderius naturally resented the slight put upon his daughter and vowed to take revenge at the first opportunity.

The opportunity came when Carloman died in 771 and Charlemagne appropriated the vacant kingdom to the exclusion of his brother's infant sons. Their mother, Queen Gerberga, fled with them to the court of Desiderius, who immediately announced his intention of supporting their claims and urged the pope to crown them (in 772). When Pope Hadrian refused, Desiderius took his frustrations out on the Papal States.

From his father Charlemagne had inherited the title Patrician of the Romans, which gave him the right to hear appeals from the Roman law courts. It also carried with it a special obligation to protect the temporal rights of the Holy See, so in the autumn of 772, Charlemagne agreed to come to the Pope's aid. By early 774, Charlemagne's nephews had ceased to be a problem, Desiderius had become a monk, and Charlemagne had taken the title of King of the Lombards.

War with the Saxons

In 772, for reasons unknown, Charlemagne decided it was time to convert the Saxons, who had until then been nothing but troublesome heathens on his northern and eastern borders. In July of that year he took Eresburg by storm, and destroyed the sacred pillar Irminsul. The Saxons retaliated by raiding Hesse while Charles was busy in Italy.

Upon his return from Italy in 775, Charlemagne opened a war of conquest which was only completed in the 14th campaign. The Saxons usually offered submission when they were attacked in force, and rebelled again when Charlemagne withdrew his forces. His chief opponent was the Westphalian chieftain Widukind who, in 778, raided the east bank of the Rhine up to Coblenz, and, in 782, destroyed a Frankish punitive force in Saxony. Charlemagne retaliated with the massacre of 4,500 Saxon captives at Verden. Widukind submitted upon terms and was baptized in 785. Although it took several more campaigns, the rest of Saxony was brought under Charlemagne's control by 804.

Invasion of Spain

In 777, three Moorish emirs visited Charlemagne and proposed to him an invasion of northern Spain, to which Charlemagne agreed. In 778, Charlemagne himself cammanded an expedition against Saragossa. T