Short History Of... - Charlemagne

Episode Date: May 31, 2026

Charlemagne remains one of the towering figures of European history. He created for himself a vast territory that covered most of modern-day France and Germany, encompassing the Low Countries, areas in northern Spain, and parts of Italy. His imperial coronation on Christmas Day 800AD was the culmination of his life’s work.     But alongside his sometimes brutal military campaigning, Charlemagne was a devout and cultured leader. He sponsored educational reforms, brought leading scholars from across Europe to his court at Aachen, and pursued diplomatic ties with far-flung Christian and Muslims kingdoms alike.   But how was Charlemagne able to conquer such an enormous swathe of Europe? Why was this famous warrior so interested in spiritual and intellectual matters? And what fate befell his mighty empire after his death? This is a Short History Of Charlemagne. A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Matthew Gabriele, professor of medieval studies and the co-author of the recent book on the Carolingian dynasty, Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers that Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe. He also hosts the podcast “American Medieval". Written by Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow | Produced by Kate Simants | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design by Oliver Sanders | Assembly edit by Dorry Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw | Fact check: Sean Coleman Unlock the next two episodes of Short History Of… right now by subscribing to Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network, including Real Survival Stories and Sherlock Holmes Short Stories. Just click the subscription banner at the top of the feed, or head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions to get started. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is Christmas Day 800 AD. Heavy gray clouds fill the sky above the city of Rome, threatening rain. A young nobleman glances up at the oppressive sky. He is wearing a new dark green tunic and does not want to get it wet, but he cannot hurry under cover. Part of an orderly procession, he slowly makes his way into St. Peter's Basilica, in the heart of the Holy City. At the head of the procession strides Charlemagne, king of the Franks.

Tall and heavily built, though his hair is greying, his body is still strong after years spent on campaign. Thanks to a string of victories over the past three decades, he is undoubtedly the most important ruler in Western Europe. The basilica's sturdy wooden doors swing open as the king approaches them, admitting him into the cavernous interior. Following behind, the young nobleman walks with the crowd amid thick coils of incense and smoke from hundreds of candles. Crammed in on either side are thousands of Rome's inhabitants. Even the heady frankincense can't fully mask the unpleasant tang of so many unwashed bodies. As the nobles process through the grand nave towards the altar, the flickering candlelight catches on the gilded mosaics decorating the walls and illuminates the sorenates the sore.

pillars. The timbered gabled roof is so far overhead that it might as well be touching heaven. At the altar ahead waits the Pope himself, Leo III, resplendent in white and gold silk vestments. Filling the central aisle, the procession now comes to a halt, and the king alone mounts the steps to the high altar. As Leo raises his hand in blessing, Charlemagne lowers himself to the ground, the entire congregation following suit. The young nobleman prostrates himself, letting the familiar words of the mass wash over him as the Pope begins to chant. But what he and all these people are really here for is what comes next.

The real reason the king is celebrating Christmas in Rome. At last, the Pope falls silent, and the congregation climb to their feet. Then Leo steps forward, a thick circlet of gold. rolled raised high in both hands. The colourful jewels adorning the crown gleam in the candlelight as he gently places it on Charlemagne's head. It is the moment they have been waiting for. As one, the congregation raises its voice in acclamation, chanting the words that confirm him as their great leader crowned by God. They repeat the phrase three times before the church is filled to the rafter with a deafening wave of cheers. But then,

As the last shouts die away, something even more astonishing happens. Amid murmurs of incredulity, the Pope himself, the inhabitant of the throne of St. Peter, prostrates himself on the floor before Charlemagne. For the first time in 300 years, the eternal city has its own emperor, a man to whom even the Holy Father will kneel. Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, remains one of the tower of the towering. figures of European history. Through a series of astonishing feats of arms, he created for himself a vast territory that covered most of modern-day France and Germany, encompassing the low countries,

areas in northern Spain, and parts of Italy. His imperial coronation on Christmas Day 800 AD was the culmination of his life's work. But alongside his sometimes brutal military campaigning, Charlemagne was a devout and cultured leader. He sponsored educational reforms, brought leading scholars from across Europe to his court at Arcan, and pursued diplomatic ties with far-flung Christian and Muslim kingdoms alike. But how was Charlemagne able to conquer such an enormous swathe of Europe? Why was this famous warrior so interested in spiritual and intellectual matters?

And what fate befell his mighty empire after his death? I'm John Hopkins, from the Noiser Podcast Network. This is a short history of Charlemagne. The royal line to which Charlemagne belongs is known now as the Carolingian dynasty, named after his grandfather Charles Martel, who was born around 68 AD. His home is part of a territory known as Francia, the kingdom of the Frankish people. Their Christian realm covers much of modern-day France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and large swathes of north central Germany,

and is ruled by a dynasty known as the Merovingians. Professor Matthew Gabriel is the co-author of Oathbreakers, a recent book on the Carolingian dynasty and host of the American medieval podcast. When we want to talk about how Charlemagne came to power, we really have to start with the people that he belonged to a group of people called the Franks. They solidified as Roman authority kind of pulled back

under a dynasty called the Merovingians, who ruled for about 300 years. And then in the beginning of the 8th century and very powerful aristocratic family, who would become the Carolingians, kind of rose to power under the Merivindian kings, mostly as kind of their war leaders. But by the start of the 8th century, the strength of the Merivindian kings is weakening, with much of their power held by the mayor of the palace, akin to a prime minister. By 719 Charlemagne's grandfather, Charles Martel, known as the hammer, holds that position. As he controls the region's military, he essentially controls the king, his treasure, and with it,

the entirety of the Frankish kingdom. When Martel dies in 741, he has such power over the state that he is able to bequeath his ruling position to his two sons, Pippin, also known as Peppin and Carlemon. Within a few years, Carlemont enters a monastery. A career in the church is not unusual for the second sons of the Frankish nobility, and Calamon is certainly deeply pious, though some sources suggest he faces pressure to step aside. Whatever the truth, the move leaves Pippin as the sole mayor of the palace.

But that is not the limit of his ambitions. Pepin, unfortunately named Pepin the Short, became king in 751 in basically a coupon. when he seized power from the Merovingians, kind of assigned them to a monastery so that they could live out their lives and seize power for himself. With both his brother and the last Merovingian ruler now confined to religious houses, Pippin the short becomes Pippin the third, the first Carolingian king. Charlemagne, or Charles, as he was christened, is Pippin's oldest son, the grandson of Charles Martel.

but his exact birth date is unclear. It's a really interesting question about when Charlemagne was born. We don't actually know because there's no sources from that period that recorded a birthday. There's no later sources which record kind of how old he is. Some really good scholarship has put his, probably it's our best guess, and it's probably a very good guess, that he was born sometime around 7.41. His mother was a woman by the name of Bertrata. We don't know a whole lot about Bertrata.

She was probably a high-ranking noble woman befitting someone of Pepin's As with his childhood, Charlemagne's upbringing and education remain something of a mystery. He is likely raised at court, taught by the group of scholars Bertrada had gathered around herself. We can kind of guess from what the education of an elite, Frankish man at that time would have been. And also from a biography that was later written about Charlemagne by a chronicler by the name of Einhard, who was a courtier who knew Charlemagne personally who lived at his court. There's some problems with the biography, of course. It's very highly stylized, and also it was written as political propaganda after Charlemagne's death.

That being said, is that it seems pretty clear that Charlemagne himself was pretty well educated. He himself knew how to read, but he probably didn't know how to write, which seems maybe perhaps odd to us. But at the same time, in early Middle Ages, these two activities were actually held as distinct. You could learn how to read, but not how to write. They were seen as kind of not part of one basket of literacy, but as different things. He is raised to be king, alongside his younger brother, Colomont. At the annual assemblies his father holds, he learns the arts of diplomacy and leadership, and is also trained to be a warrior and to lead troops in battle.

But though Pippin rules as a king, he still lacks the legitimacy that the Merovingians before him enjoyed, the sense of a true royal bloodline, something that can only be bestowed by the Pope. But as luck would have it, the Pope needs something from him. In 754, Pippin strikes a deal. In exchange for military support against the Lombards, who have long coveted papal lands, he convinces the pontiff to formally consecrate him as king of the Franks. Charlemagne and Carlemagne are anointed in the same ceremony. Though all three are now recognized as kings,

it is still very much Pippin who rules. And sometime during his father's reign, a teenage Charlemagne starts considering a family of his own. Charlemagne had no fewer than five wives, many more informal sexual partners or women, and at least 19 children over the course of his life. One of the reasons that it's a little bit squishy is because the idea of marriage was not the same as what we have now. It's a much more informal process. We have no records of kind of what a wedding ceremony looks like from the early middle ages. We have no sense of what a marriage kind of entailed.

it was probably some kind of agreement between families, but that also meant that they could be broken very easily. Though weddings are not yet a sacrament of the church, it is into this context that he marries a woman named Himiltrude, with whom he has a son named Pippin after his father. By 768, Charlemagne is in his early 20s, a trained warrior with a wife and son. He is ready to be king on his own terms.

On the 24th of September, 768, Pippin the third dies, after a successful campaign in Aquitaine in the south of France. It is a troublesome region of the Frankish kingdom, frequently attempting to assert its independence. But as he leaves two equal heirs, the transfer of power is not straightforward. When Pepin short dies in 768, he follows very typical Frankish,

custom at the time and divides the kingdom between his two sons, his eldest son Charles, later Charlemagne, and then his younger son, Carlemagne. Charles gets kind of the heartland of Frankish, power, kind of the western section of the kingdom of Frankeia, and Carlaman kind of gets the eastern side, including areas of Alamania, what's now modern Germany, and places like that. They are, shall we say, antagonistic towards each other throughout this entire time. They don't get along particularly well.

But Charles has the great good fortune of having his brother die. It seems like natural causes there doesn't seem to have been kind of any foul play at that time. Charles moves very quickly to secure the support of powerful aristocrats in Carlemont's kingdom and establishes himself as kind of sole ruler of the Frankish kingdom. It is not inevitable that Charlemagne will inherit his brother's territory. Carloman's widow Gerboga flees with her sons to Italy, as soon as her husband dies, possibly fearful of what her brother-in-law may do to secure the Frankish throne for himself. Around the time of his brother's death, it is possible that Charlemagne briefly married.

or at least contemplates marrying an Italian princess, the daughter of the King of Lombardy. A letter survives from the Pope, chastising him for considering such a match with the Lombards against whom he has had frequent clashes. What is certain is that Charlemagne now marries a noble woman from the Germanic Alemannia tribe. He marries a woman by the name of Hildegarde,

who is from a very prominent aristocratic family in his brother's kingdom in 772. meaning that he's forming the alliance across the borders after his brother has died in order to cement aristocratic support for his takeover of his brother's kingdom. Hildegarde is only 13 or 14 when she weds the Frankish king, who is at least a decade older. Over the 11 years of their marriage, she will give birth nine times. Three sons born to Hildegard and Charlemagne, Charles, a second Pippin, and Louis, as well as daughters Rootrude, Bertha and Gisela, will survive.

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against the pagan Saxons on his northern border. One of the fundamental pillars of Frankish rule is conquest, is warfare. It was a way that kings established themselves as legitimate rulers, but also as a way of gathering plunder, gathering booty, that they can distribute to powerful aristocrats in order to effectively buy their loyalty. Military campaigns are built into the very fabric of governance of the Frankish realm, meaning that every May 1st, the Franks would gather an army. Usually the king would send out notices as to where that would be, and then they would launch a campaign.

So most of their campaigning was done to the northeast into an area called Saxony, which is a modern region in Germany as well. But in Saxony, the polytheistic Saxons at the time had been kind of the long-term enemies of the Franks for quite a while. And it was a way of demonstrating power, it was a way of asserting control, but also again a way of gathering plunder from non-Christian enemies in order to redistribute that elsewhere. The 772 campaign is a stunning success.

The Frankish army destroys the most sacred holy sight of the Saxon people and also captures a huge amount of treasure. Despite the victory, this is far from the last war he will wage in Saxony, which will not be fully subdued for another three decades. But though Charlemagne's fight with the Saxons partly has its roots in his religiosity and his fervent desire to convert non-believers. He doesn't only fight pagans. In places where they fought other Christians,

there was a betrayal of the Franks as kind of the right kind of Christians and their enemies as kind of the wrong kind of Christians. And one of the ways that they emphasized this was the Frankish alliance with the papacy, the Bishop of Rome, so that they had the backup of the Bishop of Rome and the entire church establishment on their side to help them justify the conquests of these other Christian peoples. The first of these conquests of fellow Christians is the northern Italian kingdom of Lombardy.

At the request of the Pope, Charlemagne brings the region under his control in 774, dethroning the man who may have been his father-in-law, King Desiderius. A few years later, he launches an expedition into Catalonia, beginning the process of extending Carolingian control across the Pyrenees. Though he will eventually conquer Barcelona, this first campaign is blighted by a devastating ambush in the mountains as his army makes its way home. In the early 780s, the Frankish army suffers an even greater defeat back in Saxony. While some groups have submitted to Charlemagne's authority, others continue to resist

the foreign Christian invasion of their homeland. One such group, fighting back against forced baptism and the destruction of their sacred sites, defeat one of his Frankish forces in 782. When he hears of the loss, the king is furious. Gathering an army, he rides hard to Saxony, to exact his revenge. It is October 782. In Saxony, northern Germany, a man in a filthy tunic stumbles along a riverbank. His hands bound tightly behind his back with rough cord.

He struggles to maintain his balance. The rope chafes the softest. skin on the insides of his wrists, and he can feel angry welts forming. As he steps onto a particularly treacherous patch of ground, it is only the tightly packed bodies around him that prevent him from pitching forward into the mud. Like him, the hands of these men are also tied, several thousand Saxon prisoners being herded along this riverbank like livestock. To add insult to injury, the armed men marching alongside, striking them if they stumble are their countrymen. The prisoner glares at the nearest guard. It is traitors like him,

Saxons who have allied themselves with Charlemagne and taken their own kind captive, who should be the ones in bondage. Too soon the prisoner arrives at his destination, a large open field beside the river fringed with ancient trees. And in the center, something that makes his heart sink. Even from this distance, he can see that the small, mounted party awaiting his arrival is heavily armed. Breast plates flash dullly under heavy cloaks and swords are visible at their hips. A raid behind them are lines of cavalry, the horses shifting and tossing their mains. Further back are hundreds of infantrymen all equipped with round wooden shields and long spears,

their wickedly sharp tips gleaming in the insipid autumn light. The leaders of the Saxon party order the prisoners and their guards to halt, before crossing the field to speak to the men on horseback. The rebel watches, as these Saxon turncoats bow their heads deferentially to one of them, the man he assumes must be the hated Charlemagne. After a short conversation, the Frankish king gestures to his soldiers, who begin to march across the field towards the captives. Within minutes, the prisoners are encircled by a wall of Frankish,

infantrymen. Panic rises among the bound men, but there is no escape. Charlemann rides up and dismisses the Saxon guards, who nod and depart, leaving their bound compatriots alone with the Franks. Despite the wall of spears, the prisoner can see the king clearly, sitting proudly on a dappled grey horse. In a loud voice he accuses them of treason, for their unlawful uprising and their slaughter of his Frankish soldiers on the field at Zuntel, there is only one fitting punishment. Death. The prisoner lets out a shuddering breath.

All around him his fellow Saxons are in uproar. Some shout, others sob or plead for mercy. The Charlemagne sits impassive on his horse as his soldiers begin to slide from their saddles, hands going to their swords. As the first prisoners are hauled away and forced to their knees, by the banks of the river, the man closes his eyes to pray. It is not clear if the gods will hear him

over the screams and the sickening sound of metal meeting flesh. In retaliation for the Saxon revolt in 782, Charlemagne kills four and a half thousand rebels before pillaging the surrounding countryside. The toll exacted is so steep that Saxon resistance then melts away. In later years, a contemporary source records that the king is able to travel through the region on empty roads wherever he chooses. Charlemagne's actions have been described by some historians as a form of genocide. The Saxons really were the most intransigent enemies, and the ones in which, very frankly, the greatest number of activities were, but also the greatest atrocities, were committed. And the sources record massacres of thousands of people at times at the end of campaigns,

destruction of polytheistic or pagan temples, if you prefer, and in fact forced migration in which thousands of Saxons were forcibly relocated into Francia, and then Frankish nobles and Frankish Freeman were put into their place in order to finally subdue the subjugated population. Saxony will not be fully incorporated into the Carolingian Empire until 804, but these actions precipitate its end as an independent pagan region of Europe. Meanwhile, Charlemagne continues his ruthless quest for domination. In 788 he seizes Bavaria from his cousin Tassilo and sends him his wife and his children to religious houses to remove them from the political arena. After that he moves on to modern-day Hungary where he crushes the pagan Avas and takes their wealth for his own.

But he is also forced to suffer his own losses in these years. After his wife Hildegard dies in childbirth, he marries again, this time to Fustrada, with whom he father's two more daughters. But within a decade, she is also dead. When she passes away, he remarries another woman at the age of 50 by the name of Ljutgard, who they don't have any children together. But interest first among them, he is having relationships and having children as well. In 800, Shalamin reaches the pinnacle of power. On Christmas Day, he is crowned emperor by the Pope in Rome, the first to hold the title in the West since the 5th century. In the early medieval period, Rome is racked by political turmoil,

and the Pope is frequently subject to the whims of secular elites. Charlemagne's coronation is thanks, at least in part, to the Pope's reliance on him and his military might. In 799, the Pope in Rome, Leo III, is attacked during a procession. He's captured, and he manages to flee the city of Rome. There's dramatic accounts of him scaling the walls and jumping outside. and then running north to Paderborn in modern Germany to meet Charlemagne there. Charlemagne sends an army south and then marches south as well, re-establishes the Pope in Rome,

establishes justice, puts the perpetrators of this attack on trial. And then on Christmas Day in the year 800, Leo rewards him by putting a crown on Charlemagne's head and claiming him as Roman emperor. This is at least how the story goes. According to one contemporary biography of Charlemagne, he is unaware of the Pope's plan until the imperial crown is laid on his head. But the events seem too stage-managed for this to be a convincing explanation.

Now, the actual reality is a little bit more complicated because Charlemagne had probably been planning to become emperor for some time beforehand. What being Roman emperor does, it allows him equal footing to negotiate with the Byzantine emperor, with the Eastern Roman Emperor in the East, but also allow some jurisdiction in Italy in and around Rome and then further to the south as well. And this was an important part of his expansionistic plans in order to demonstrate that this marriage

between the papacy, between the church and the state had kind of finally come to fruition, but also allow him to push further south into the rich partlands of southern Italy, which he was very much interested in doing. After his coronation, he uses his new authority as Roman emperor to exert his influence throughout Italy, launching a new series of military expeditions. He turns his attention to the Duchy of Benevento, the remaining fragment of Lombardy in the south of the country, as well as fighting with the Byzantine Empire over the remnants of their Italian territory. By the early years of the 9th century, Charlemagne has expanded the lands he inherited

from his father in almost every direction. The emperor of much of Western Europe, he is, without a doubt, its most powerful ruler. Having built himself an empire, Charlemagne is now faced with the challenge of ruling it. Twice a year, Frankish nobles travel to the emperor's court, bringing with them their military retinues and mountains of precious gifts for their emperor. At these assemblies, major decisions about Francia's governance are made. Though Charlemagne has the last word, it is a space where ecclesiastical and secular elites can make their voices heard, and from this hub, His commands are carried across every part of his territory. He relies a lot on centralizing his authority,

establishing basically a capital at the city of Aachen, which is in modern Western Germany. As he gets older and as he starts to take on the trappings of empire, he starts to send out Misi Domini, basically messengers of the Lord, in which they are charged by the king himself, sometimes maybe with written orders, law codes that are promulgated at Aachen itself,

and then making sure that the establishment of justice is being done, that people are aware of the new regulations and records that are being put forth at the Capitol are known about in Southern Italy or in, you know, in Bavaria or kind of wherever. This goes back to why expansion is so important, why plunder, why loyalty of his high aristocrats are so important, because they become effectively representatives of him out in the rest of the empire as well. And they become kind of visible signs of the reach of the Frankish Empire. that extend kind of everywhere across this vast expanse of land.

Historians know little about the people over whom Charlemagne and his nobles rule, but aspects of their lives can be glimpsed in official sources as well as archaeological finds. What we can tell is that it was heavily agricultural, it was tied very much to place, really dependent upon harvests and the rhythms of the season. One of the really interesting things is that teeth quality actually improved in the early Middle ages as opposed to Rome and to the later Middle Ages, which means that they actually had a better balanced diet than earlier and before. Generally, the standard of life was maybe kind of a little, especially in rural areas, was actually a little bit higher than it was in late Rome, which I think

kind of goes against our expectations. Christianity plays a large role in everyday life, with the religious houses Charlemagne patronizes serving as important outposts of his authority. By installing sympathetic abbots and bishops who then owe him their loyalty, he establishes a network of eyes and ears throughout Frankia, even in harder to reach rural areas, and pushes his preferred expressions of faith. And so Charlemagne fought not only to expand his own territory, but to standardize the practice of Christianity,

which led to, at his court, new translations of the Bible into Latin and the dissemination of proper translations, a standardization of the mass of the liturgy that would be performed so that ideally every church within his empire would be having the same kind of Christian experience. Meanwhile, as he continues to extend his political and ecclesiastical control across the empire, Charlemagne's wives and daughters have their own roles to play closer to home. He relied upon his wives, the queens, to be important political figures as well. And so this is absolutely true of Kildegard, his third wife.

She was absolutely a political dealmaker in her own right. He was off campaigning a lot at the same time. And so she was in charge of the court. She was the person, his woman, at the court, who was in charge of maintaining the proper functioning of court. If you wanted to get to Charlemagne, you had to go through his queen oftentimes. And we know this because actually there's a really interesting coin that was struck at one of his royal mint,

which has the name Carolus Rex, Charles the King on one side, and then Fistrata Regina. Pestrada the Queen on the other side. This is almost unheard of. It acknowledges this relationship between the King and the Queen, that she is not just a woman who's sitting by his side, but a power in her own right. Outside of Francia, Charlemagne must maintain diplomatic relations with a dizzying array of countries. Some, like the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia, are fairly close to his borders.

But he is also enmeshed in long-distance communication with other foreign rulers, including the Abbasid Caliph based in Baghdad, with whom he exchanges and gifts. It is July 802, at Charlemagne's new palace at Arkin. The sun burns brightly in a shockingly blue sky. Hurrying across the courtyard outside the stables, a man ducks through a creaking wooden door into a small room. It is a little cooler inside,

and he finds a pitcher and basin have been laid out for him on a wooden table. He splashes water onto his face. and neck, scrubbing off the accumulated sweat and grime from his long journey. His name is Isaac, and despite his Jewish heritage, he is one of Charlemagne's emissaries. He has just returned from an arduous voyage to the court of the Muslim Abbasid Caliph, where he was entrusted with a mighty gift for the emperor. A gift, Charlemagne is anxious to receive. Quickly drying himself with the cloth, Isaac runs a comb through his curls. grimacing at how dusty his hair feels.

There is a fresh tunic here too, and he hastily shucks off his dirty one and pulls it on. It's as clean as he can get without keeping the emperor waiting. His stomach rumbles, a reminder that he is not eaten for hours, but that will have to wait too. Flinginging the door open, he heads back out into the stable courtyard, the sudden burst of sunlight making his eyes ache. He squints at the group of servants gathered

anxiously around the emperor's gift, whispering and staring, and shouts at them to get moving. At his instruction, two of them run off to get a large trough of water. Isaac moves towards the beast that now dominates the courtyard. He has become accustomed to it over the course of their long journey together across land and sea, but now that it stands outside the palace, he feels its incongruity again. Its skin is tough and gray, ridged and rough to the touch as he lays a hand on its flank. Its large ears flap as though in recognition, and its long trunk continues to scuffle about on the dirty floor, searching for something to eat. Its trumpets happily when the trough of fresh water is placed in front of it. When the elephant has drunk its fill, Isaac instructs an attendant to take

hold of its lead rope. Then, with servants holding other boxes containing an assortment of other offerings, the procession is ready. Isaac himself leads it, bearing a letter from the caliph. Behind him, men bearing wooden chests, and bringing up the rear the astonishing, exotic beast, the most anticipated gift of all. Now they set out for the larger courtyard in front of the palace, where the emperor and his courtiers are gathered. When they emerge through the gateway, many of the nobles surrounding Charlemagne gasp in surprise, or draw back in fear as the strange beast lumbers towards them with heavy footsteps.

But all Isaac can see on the emperor's own face is an expression of pure joy and amazement, as he takes in the precious gifts he has been sent from the east. After its arrival in 802, the elephant lived at Arcan for almost a decade. His journey, and even his name, Abul Abbas, are recorded in the prolific histories and annals produced at Charlemagne's court. This literature is part of a broader program of intellectual pursuit and educational reform encouraged by the emperor. As well as being a warrior, he is a learned man, supporting a renewal

of the scholarly culture of antiquity. For a long time, scholars used to talk about the Carolingian Renaissance, this period kind of in the late 8th, early 9th century, in which there seemed to be kind of a re-flowering of learning after a long decline. And that's still kind of true, though the term itself has fallen out of fashion. As a central aspect of this program, Charlemagne gathers the best and brightest scholars of the day to his court. Some of them travel across Europe to reach Arcan, drawn to the side of the pious and academic emperor. One of the things that Charlemagne did was not to kind of do something new, but to, consolidate a lot of the learning that had been happening elsewhere.

And what I mean by that is that one of the most famous figures of this period, this so-called Carolingian Renaissance, was a guy by the name of Alcuin. Alcuin from Northumbria grew up kind of around York, also known as Alcuin of York. It wasn't that he suddenly became kind of brilliant once he showed up at Charlemagne's court. He had been a very learned scholar, and he was attracted to this kind of center that Charlemagne was establishing around his court. The written word is crucial to Charlemagne's reign and legacy.

Before his rule, textual forms vary from scribe to scribe and monastery to monastery, hindering legibility and the transfer of ideas. But as part of his reforms, and perhaps under the supervision of Alcuin, a standardized text is developed, with rounded letters and consistent punctuation and spacing, with everything from law codes to histories to bureaucratic records now written down and stored in libraries. but he also encourages a flourishing of art and poetry and has strong views on education. Schools are set up throughout the empire to promote the training of clerics and to improve their Latin literacy, and a palace school is founded at Arcan, where the sons of the nobility are sent to be trained.

Educational standards absolutely without questions seem to rise there. Aristocratic men from all over want to be sent or have their sons sent to the palace school to be educated there, but also, of course, to be in proximity to the king, to maybe gain a favor from him, to go on campaign with him, to catch his eyes so that they can be rewarded with some of the plunder or land or a title, to be named a Misi Dominiichi,

to be sent out to the interlends on the king's behalf as well. There is, of course, a heavily religious element to Charlemagne's enthusiasm for education. It wasn't just kind of a side interest in education. And by education, we should say not just secular education, but religious education as well. Charlemagne cared about Christianity. He really did.

He wanted people to worship in the proper way. He wanted people to be converted. And it wasn't just an element of political control, but the role of king, as he seemed to understand it, was to be a shepherd of souls. Whatever his motives, it is thanks to Charlemagne's patronage that many important early medieval scholars are able to work

and many classical texts copied and preserved for future generations. As he ages, Charlemagne increasingly remains in his capital at Arcan, rather than heading out on the annual campaigns that dominated his younger years. Though his forces have, by the early 9th century, fully secured what was once Saxon territory, this extension of his northern border brings him into direct contact with the new enemy, the Vikings. Though pitched battles between the two are largely avoided through diplomacy, Charlaman recognizes the threat of maritime incursions and sets about building a major. massive system of naval defenses. Using a combination of watchtowers, signal fires, and his own ships guarding the coast and river mouths, he successfully deters any major land invasion in his lifetime. But he also starts thinking about his legacy. His eldest son with Himiltrude has by now been confined to a monastery following a failed rebellion. But his sons with Hildegard are given pieces of the

empire to rule. Though the emperor retain, His eldest son with Hildegard, Charles the Younger, is anointed co-king of Frankia by the Pope, with the understanding that he will inherit most of his father's territory when he dies. Meanwhile, Pippin is made king of Lombardy, Louis is given Aquitaine, and his daughters begin to take over the reins at court. Especially his eldest daughter by the name of Bertha, she seems to have been the power at court. She was the one who distributed patronage, who allowed access to the king in his old age. and stuff like that and basically ran things in his absence.

Though we might imagine medieval princesses to be married off strategically, as little more than pawns in their father's diplomatic games, Charlemagne's daughters remain unwed. His biographer Einhard claims that the emperor loves his daughters too much to ever let them leave home. But a more likely explanation is the concern that making in-laws of another noble family could dilute his own power. He is also possibly worried about his daughter's

reducing male heirs, who could challenge his own son's inheritance. But the lack of diplomatic arranged marriages does not stop his daughters from entering into romantic relationships with courtiers. I don't know if the daughters themselves, in every case, wanted to marry. They were very happy establishing themselves at court. They had power. And again, based upon what we know about marriage patterns and the legitimacy of marriage, their relationships, which oftentimes we know they had long-term relationships, like,

Why are we saying that's illegitimate? We're saying it's illegitimate because some of them did produce children, and Charlemagne didn't want them to be kind of potential threat. But it didn't seem like anybody at the court or anybody in the period kind of thought of those as inappropriate in any way, shape, or form. Though Charlemagne may imagine himself in his later years surrounded by his daughters and grandchildren, with his three sons ready to rule parts of his empire after his death,

fate has other plans. In 8-10, his son Pippin, King of Lombardy dies. Charles the younger follows him to the grave a year later. Only Louis remains, and in 8.13 he is crowned co-emperor by his father. Then the next January, Charlemagne himself passes away in his early to mid-60s. But by now, Louis is far away, ruling Aquitaine. He is only informed of his father's death after the funeral at Arcan has taken place.

Louis is very aware of his tenuous position at this time. And so he marches very, very slowly with an army back towards the court because he doesn't know what's going to happen. It seems very clear he's expecting maybe a fight in order to take the empire. And the person who would organize that fight is his sister. Once Louis finally does arrive at court, the first thing he does is he exiles all of his sisters, every single sister. He has a couple of noblemen killed for treason. It seems very clear that they were the partners of some of his sisters, whether they were actually kind of plotting his demise or not.

That seems very up in the air. And then also some of his cousins and his half-brothers, his illegitimate brothers, if you will, sending them off to monasteries, exiling them from court, and then that allows him to finally kind of take over. Louis continues in his campaign to secure his position with a ruthlessness that marks him out as his father's son. In 8-17, after his nephew attempts to regain control of the Lombard kingdom that had been bequeathed to his brother Pippin,

Louis has the upstart blinded, a procedure from which he dies two days later. But his attempts to exert control over the entirety of Frankia are ultimately fruitless. Louis spends much of his reign warring with his own sons, men who, after his death in 840, continue to fight amongst themselves. Eventually, in 843, the Carolingian Empire is formally divided. Today, this event is considered the catalyst that establishes France and Germany as separate countries. It is also the death knell for the unified European Empire Charlemagne fought so hard to create.

His empire may not have lasted, but Charlemagne's legacy lives on. It's largely thanks to his efforts to preserve and copy ancient texts that so much writing from ancient Rome survived, and the standardized script that was developed under his rule formed the basis of much of our modern writing. His control of European territories remained unmatched for a thousand years until the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. And though his often barbaric methods might not win him any accolades today, he is remembered annually with the Charlemagne Prize, awarded to recognize those who advance the cause of European unity, with past recipients, including Winston Churchill, Bill Clinton, and Angela Merkel.

As a warlord, political figurehead, defender of the Christian faith or religious unifier, Charlemagne retains his place in history as an emperor for the ages. For us today, he becomes incredibly important because he seems like the first, especially to 19th and early 20th century scholars, kind of the founder of Europe in a real way. Charlemagne created this empire and then it was lost in the first. subsequent generations. And then it led to all this dissension of the European religious wars of the

early modern period, the world wars of something like that. If we had only kept on to that unity, we would have had peace. We would have had modernity in an early period as well. Next time on short history, we'll bring you a short history of Jacques Cousteau. He embodies adventure under the sea, and he is still the name that comes to mind when so many people talk about where they got their inspiration from. the sea, Jacques Cousteau will come up. And it's because his films are still out there on the internet, his books are still out there and available, and because his principles are stronger than ever about the need to look after the oceans. That's next time. If you enjoyed hearing

about Charlemagne's life and would like to know more about his clashes with the Vikings, then why not delve into Noises' new show Real Vikings? Search Real Vikings in your podcast app and hit follow. You can listen to the next two episodes of short history of right now, without waiting and without adverts, by subscribing to Noysa Plus. Just hit the link in the episode description or head to www.org.com forward slash subscriptions to unlock more episodes today. Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up?

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