Emperor Charles went down in history with the nickname the Great. This could not have been an accident. Never in history has this or that nickname been given to someone who was not worthy of it.
The first emperor in Western Europe since the days of Ancient Rome. Crowned approximately 1200 years ago. He created huge territorial associations within the borders of the former Western Roman Empire, and fought desperately for them.
The conqueror is also the reformer. All the while on campaigns, he carried out reforms that were important for history.
What began during his reign in the spiritual life is called the "Carolingian revival." This combination of words is usually put in quotation marks - and in vain. This was precisely the revival of ancient enlightenment.
What is the only literary reform! They began to write in a different way, so that manuscripts became much more accessible. Until that time, only a select few could read them.
And finally, Charlemagne is the hero of The Song of Roland. Not every politician had a chance to enter the heroic epic.
At least, the neglect that arose in relation to the figure of Charlemagne in Soviet times is completely unfair. They wrote about him with a strange contemptuous tone: "The patchwork empire that he created collapsed shortly after the death of its creator." As if its disintegration should annoy or resent us.
Instead, one should calmly and carefully look at the life and deeds of this great man.
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Charles was born probably in 742, the exact date is unknown. Father - Pepin, nicknamed the Short, mayord (chief minister) Childeric III, the last of the Merovingian dynasty ruler of the kingdom of the Franks. Many such Germanic, barbarian kingdoms were formed on the territory of Western Europe when the great Roman Empire collapsed. Speaking about their rulers, we use the words "king", "queen", as they are called in ancient texts, but it must be remembered that these are yesterday's tribal leaders, this is still a very wild, barbaric world.
As you can see, the boy was named after his grandfather - Karl Martell (Martell means "hammer"). The fact is that the name Karl was not at all popular among the Pipinids. But in this case, an exception was made: Karl's own grandfather is a hero who stopped the movement of Arabs from the Iberian Peninsula to Western Europe.
In 732, the united German army - the basis of which was made up of the Franks, but the Burgundians, the Alemanni, and others participated - under his command defeated the Arabs at Poitiers (in the center of present-day France). If this battle had not been won, the map of Europe and its ethnic appearance would probably have been different. Karl was striving, probably, to imitate his great grandfather, to be a mighty "hammer" for enemies.
751 - Pepin, having received the support of Pope Zacharias, usurped power and sent the former king to the monastery. The Pope approved this act, knowing that he would receive a gift in gratitude - the papal state. There are so many gifts! In this case, a piece of land in the center of Italy.
The mother of the future Charlemagne - Queen Bertrada, domineering, energetic, participated in political life, visited Bavaria with the Duke of Tasselon, in Northern Italy with the King of the Lombards Desiderius. She covered considerable distances - with the then communications! She had the idea to conclude alliances with neighboring kings, so that the Franks would not fight, but would act at the same time with them. This idea was doomed to fall. Bertrada's son Karl proved that at that time it was possible to unite peoples only by force.
The queen brought Charles from Italy a bride, the youngest daughter of King Desiderius Desideriad. Karl, 28, was married, but his mother forced him to reject his previous wife and marry Desiderias. This was nothing more than a naive attempt to mend relations with the Lombards. The wedding was played solemnly on Christmas Day.
It should be noted that Karl was very fond of Christmas. He was a genuinely religious person. And all the significant events of his life took place, usually around Christmas or around Christmas time.
Pepin early began to introduce his eldest son to public affairs. When Charles was only 11 years old, his father sent him to meet Pope Stephen II. Dad's visit is very important. And in 761-762, 19-year-old Karl accompanied his father on the Aquitaine military campaigns, successful for the Franks.
768 Pepin dies. With regard to the inheritance, he did the same as his predecessors, the Merovingians - he treated the kingdom as his own estate, and divided it among his sons. It was, of course, very stupid - to fight to strengthen the power, and then divide the land.
Karl got a strange crescent-shaped territory, along the Bay of Biscay and the English Channel. And inside, in the middle, were the possessions of his younger brother Carloman. Relations between the brothers immediately became strained. War was brewing. It was not clear which side the mother, the dowager queen, would take.
But providence intervened. 771 Carloman dies unexpectedly. A young and not at all sickly person. Suspicions arise, of course. But no evidence that he was killed has reached us.
As the researcher of the life of Charlemagne wrote, the remarkable medievalist A. Levandovsky, "the road of conquest has opened."
Karl immediately pushed his mother out of the political arena, quickly sent his wife Desideriad back to Lombardy. The early barbarian kings were fairly straightforward about divorce. The Christian church taught them that marriages are made in heaven, that a wife is forever. They listened to the bishops with courtesy, pretending to agree, and then, when their wife interfered with them, they simply sent her somewhere far away. They did not execute their wives; after that, as civilization developed, everything took such cruel forms. And the Merovingians, Carolingians sent their wife away, took another. And there was no divorce ceremony.
The Carolingians are the name of the new dynasty. It doesn't just sound prettier than the Pipinids. History itself recognizes Charles as the most significant ruler of this kind.
He started with wars. War was for him a normal form of existence and the main political instrument. It should be noted what was the society that arose on the ruins of the Western Roman Empire. After all, the overwhelming majority of people then forgot how to write and read - such was the degree of barbarization.
Karl seems to have learned to read Latin and even a little in Greek. True, according to the myth, he wrote only one word - Carolus, that is, he put his signature. But perhaps he only added a little hook to the finished signature. These signatures have survived, where the word Carolus was written by a scribe, and Karl put a curl to sign that he had put his hand.
In this barbaric world, war is the norm. Society develops, enriches itself only through elementary arithmetic operations - addition. More land - more wealth - more people - more income. Expanding boundaries. And there are opportunities for expansion, because all states are still weak to a certain extent, they have neither clear boundaries, nor a permanent army, they are ruled by the day before yesterday's tribal leaders, dividing rich territories.
Karl's wars are numerous. In 774 he conquered the kingdom of the Lombards, which belonged to Desiderius, his former father-in-law, and began to be called "King of the Franks and Lombards, Roman Patrician."
Let's pay attention to the word "Roman". This is due to the fact that from the very beginning of his reign Karl began to continue his father's course of close interaction with the popes. Roman high priests are former bishops who have exalted their authority and claim to be the main mediators between God and people. Karl became their staunchest ally. He in every possible way emphasized his piety and devotion to the Roman throne. This was an important political step. It was from the Pope that Karl received sanction to conquer the Lombards. An excellent diplomatic flag. Dad needs to be protected!
Karl was constantly expanding his territory. In 776, he began to fight with Byzantium for possessions in Italy, not forgetting to add pieces of land to the popes in order to strengthen the most important political alliance.
Then 787 - German Bavaria, as well as Carinthia and Krain, lands on the border with Germany, inhabited by Slavs.
More than 30 years of war in Saxony - 772-795 years. There he was offered maximum resistance, and he did not look like any ideal hero of the epic. There was a lot of cruelty, blood, more than 4,000 hostages were killed on the orders of Charles. The war is being fought under a religious flag, and there is a forcible conversion of the pagan Saxons to Christianity. We can say that Charles is in a sense the predecessor of the Crusades.
778 - the legendary campaign for the Pyrenees, as a result of which the epic "Song of Roland" was born.
It was a campaign against an Arab state led by the Umayyad dynasty. Rendering assistance to one Arab ruler in the struggle against another, Karl, as always, hoped to increase the territory. The campaign was not very successful, but some prey with fire and sword was obtained. Charles got a small plot on the border of Navarra and the Pyrenees - he called it the Spanish mark.
On returning from this campaign, the following episode occurred. The army was stretched out in the mountains, and in the area of the Ronseval Gorge, the convoy, moving behind, burdened with booty, fell far behind - the vanguard had gone far. The lagging wagon train was attacked not by the Arabs (the Moors, as they are called in the heroic epic), but by the Christians - the Basques, driven by these same Arabs into the mountains, hungry, living in difficult conditions. All they needed was prey. And they chopped up all the francs.
The rearguard was commanded by Count Roland. The count at that time was not at all a representative of the aristocracy, it was an official position.
Hundreds of years later, in the 11th century, the Song of Roland was formed. According to the legend, which transforms and embellishes everything, the villains of the Moors attacked the valiant knights. The battle turns into a clash between Christians and Muslims.
Before the campaign, Karl gave Roland a horn and ordered to blow in case of danger. But the brave knight does not blow his trumpet until he begins to bleed. And having heard the sounds of a horn, Karl comes to the rescue: “Charlemagne was beautiful on a horse! A gray brace hangs over the armor (he never wore a beard!). And following the example of Karl, all their brads did not hide under armor. It is easy to recognize among the troops of our Franks. A beautiful, slender, mighty king! His face shines, Karl is prancing proudly on the horse.
Other lines are recalled: “Peter comes out of the tent, surrounded by a crowd of favorites. His eyes are shining. His face is terrible. The movements are fast. He is beautiful. He's all like a storm of God! " But this is Pushkin's "Poltava". A direct call of two characters, no doubt idealized!
Karl stands out against the background of other rulers, and not only because he most often wins in battles (although he had, of course, individual defeats). He is visible as a diplomat, as a politician. Perhaps it was the fact that he still reads Latin and Greek. He behaves smarter than others.
799 - Pope Leo III was overthrown as a result of a conspiracy of the Roman nobility and hid in a monastery, in a terrible state, blinded, with his tongue cut off. Then he, however, miraculously was able to heal from all this. Probably, the sources somewhat exaggerated the extent to which he was mutilated. But he was definitely offended. He fled from the monastery, ran to the great champion of the papal power, the Western ruler, who will certainly help.
At the court of Charles, the Pope was received affectionately. And then he returned to Rome. When it became clear that a mighty Frankish ruler was behind the disgraced pope, the Roman nobility immediately changed their position. The pope was only required to take an oral oath, to swear that he did not commit the atrocities of which he was accused. The pope's word is sacred, and he was found not guilty.
Karl's figure is already significant. Everyone knows that you cannot show disrespect to him - otherwise he will go on a campaign.
A year passes. And on December 25, 800, at Christmas, Karl is back in Rome. He stands in the cathedral, praying at the altar. And the pope put the imperial crown on his head. The court chronicler Einhard writes remarkably: it happened suddenly. The word "suddenly" is very expressive.
Karl, according to Einhard, later said that if he had known in advance about the Pope's intention, he would not have gone to church that day, despite the solemnity of the holiday. Here it is - diplomacy! Here it is - the language of lies! Here it is - pretense!
Einhard blurted out immediately. After the crown was placed, all the Romans and Franks present in the cathedral shouted the same text three times in chorus: "Long live and conquer Charles Augustus, God-crowned, great and peace-making Roman emperor." All in chorus, thrice and in Latin! And this is all "suddenly"?
Be that as it may, Charles became the first Western European emperor. Somewhere far in the East, in Constantinople, there was a Byzantine emperor, but the Eastern Roman Empire separated, for a long time it lived its own life, both territorially and essentially. Now, here, in Western Europe, the traditions of imperial power have revived.
The ghost of the Roman Empire did not go away for a thousand years of the Middle Ages, from the 5th to the 15th centuries. This shadow materialized from time to time. Her early materialization is Karl Pipinid, the emperor.
This event is very important, and it was nervously reacted to it in Byzantium. The rivalry intensified, which was not very noticeable for some time. But Charles is ahead of the possible actions of Byzantium and equips the embassy to the Empress Irina, a usurper who rules in place of her son Constantine and does not feel entirely confident.
Charles enlists the support of the Roman Council, which decreed: “Since now in the country of the Greeks there is no bearer of the imperial title, and the empire has been captured by a local woman, the followers of the apostles and all the holy fathers, like the rest of the Christian people, it seems that the title of emperor should be received by the king of the Franks Charles who holds in his hands Rome, where the Caesars once used to live."
This is the behavior of a person who rises above the barbarism of the era, striving to think stately.
802 - the embassy makes a simple and logical proposal to Irina. A marriage between Charles and Irina, which would, of course, be a wonderful form of uniting the two parts of the disintegrated Roman Empire. Her ghost materializes even more decisively. Karl got ahead of himself in his diplomacy: the marriages of the German rulers did not mean any unification of lands. Rather, the daughter, sent to another barbarian ruler, became a hostage. Charles also planned a dynastic marriage and a combination of power.
Irina was ready to give consent, saving her in her precarious position. However, as soon as it became clear that she was going to accept the offer, the courtiers strongly united against her. The flag for them was that she intended to marry a barbarian-Frank. She was immediately deposed, power passed to the Emperor Nicephorus, the former head of the financial department of Byzantium.
But this did not mean Karl's defeat. In 810 Nicephorus recognized him as emperor of the West.
Karl knew how to make others believe that he was a serious figure.
His embassy to the court of the Baghdad ruler Harun al-Rashid, the caliph of the Abbasid dynasty, is almost unbelievable for that era. So far! So vague is the information about this East! They write that when Karl saw an elephant figurine made of ivory, he asked what it was made of. He was told that it was from an animal tooth. He was amazed: what kind of animal is this?
But Karl knew that in the far west of his empire, where he created his Spanish brand, rivals of the Abbasids, representatives of another Arab dynasty, the Umayyads, live. Therefore, Karl expects that the Abbasids, interested in his support, will forget about religious differences and conclude an alliance with him.
Curiously, Harun al-Rashid responded by sending gifts as a sign of friendliness. Among them - the famous elephant, which Charlemagne after a long time took everywhere outside his yard. Only 8 years later, the elephant died in Saxony.
What about the private life of the emperor? Charlemagne had 6 or 7 wives, three concubines, 18 children, including illegitimate bastards.
From the first wife - the son of Pepin, who received the nickname Humpbacked. He was considered an evil hunchback and tried to carry out a coup d'etat in 792. He was imprisoned in a monastery, where he died.
Karl did not let his daughters go, he did not allow them to get married, but did not forbid them to lead a free life. The manners at court were not strict - barbarism prevailed in behavior.
The son of Louis the Pious, who inherited Charles, carried out a reform of the court, removed the concubines, and in fact led a godly life.
However, with all the liberty and savagery of morals, it was Karl who began the Carolingian revival, the rise of culture. He gathered all the most educated people of that time to his court. There were few of them, and they were known by their names. Among them are Alcuin, who was brought from the British Isles, Peter from Pisa, Agobard and Theodulf from Muslim Spain, the astronomer Dikuil. About 20 people - a lot for that era. Their association was named Academy. The Emperor was clearly drawn to something antique.
The activities of these people of science and art have had important consequences. It is no accident that the courtyard of Louis the Pious had already become completely different: they were interested in literature, read poetry, painted, and book miniatures flourished.
Charlemagne supported the opening of schools and, like Peter I, forced the children of the nobility to study. The Trivium - Quadrivium teaching system included grammar, rhetoric and logic, and then arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy. The emperor's children were also educated.
He approved of the search and collection of ancient manuscripts. Knowledge of Latin was required to read them. At the monasteries, special workshops were opened, which were called scriptoria, where they copied, sometimes with errors, but rewrote ancient texts.
The reform of the letter was very important. The illegible so-called Merovingian cursive was replaced by the Carolingian minuscule - the prototype of future Gothic typographic fonts. It's already much easier to read. It is available to a wider range of people.
Libraries were created, primarily in Saint-Denis. Some of them still exist today.
And when Charlemagne sent a military leader to lead a certain area, he sent an educated bishop with him, with scribes in attendance.
The spontaneous realization that all this is important allowed the emperor to suspend the destruction of the ancient cultural heritage.
The end of Charlemagne's life is ordinary, not at all heroic. 810 - when he was in his eighties, he began to get sick. He buried several of his children. It should be noted that he was a loving father and suffered greatly. In 810, Pepin died, in 811, Charles the Younger, heir to the throne. 813 - Charles himself crowned his remaining son Louis, and on January 28, 814, he died, not having lived a few months before the age of 72.
His grave has not survived, although it is known that he was buried in Aachen (the land of North Rhine in today's Germany).
1000 year - the pious emperor Otto III gave the order to open the grave and took the cross from there, because the ghost of the empire demanded this symbol of the direct continuity of the imperial power. All German emperors considered Charlemagne to be their patron.
But he rather was what August Wikebart called him in the 18th century - the author of the book "Comparison of Peter the Great with Charlemagne" (in 1809 it was translated into Russian). In it, Karl and Peter are called "the legislators of their peoples" and "the immortal enlighteners of nations."
N. Basovskaya