History of Europe (10) Charlemagne of the Frankish Kingdom (Part 1)

In 768 AD, Pepin the dwarf Pippin (714-768), who founded the Carolingian dynasty of the Frankish kingdom, died, and was traditionally succeeded by his two sons, Charles and Carloman, to divide the land equally. The only ruler who succeeded the Kingdom of Croats, he had great power, and for the next 28 years he was keen on war, and in the 46 years of his reign, he fought more than 50 wars, so that the kingdom's territory was bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in the west, the Elbe River and Bohemia in the east, the North Sea in the north, and the central Italy in the south, encompassing most of Western Europe, this territory roughly coincided with the European part of the Western Roman Empire that collapsed in 476, known as the "Charles Empire", and the establishment of the Charles Empire was inseparable from the life of Charles's horse and southern conquest.

In 769, as soon as Charles came to power, he continued his father's Aquitaine War, capturing Aquidan and Gascony. In 773, at the request of the Pope, he sent an army to defeat the Lombard kingdom in northern Italy, giving himself the iron crown of the Lombards. Then attacked the Saxons in the Weser and Elbe valleys, and from 772 to 804 Charles waged a 33-year war against the Saxons.

The Saxons settled in a vast area between the lower Rhine and the Elbe, and in the 8th century, at the end of their clan society. The Saxons clearly understood that if they were conquered by the Franks it would mean becoming serfs, they resisted resolutely. In 782, the Saxons staged a massive uprising, the rebels crushed the Frankish army, killed Frankish officers and missionaries, and the revolt swept through Saxony, but the revolt was ultimately unsuccessful due to the betrayal of the nobility and the disparity in strength. The rebels were brutally suppressed by Charles, and on the banks of the Weser River, 4,500 prisoners were executed on just one occasion. Charles also relocated some 10,000 inhabitants of the Elbe, along with his wife and children. Charles also decreed the Saxony Decree, promoted Christian culture, and imposed a reign of terror. As the decree provides, anyone who violently enters a church and robs or steals its belongings, or sets fire to it, shall be punished by death; In addition, the residents were forced to pay tithes (a religious tax levied by the Christian Church on the residents, which the church began to collect in the 6th century, using the biblical claim that one-tenth of agricultural and animal products "belonged to God"). In 779, Charlemagne made it an obligation for every resident of the Frankish kingdom to pay tithes. In the middle of the 10th century, Western European countries followed suit, and it was not until modern times that they were gradually abolished.) Saxony was not completely conquered until 804, and the inhabitants were forced to convert to Christianity and accept the rule of the Frankish kingdom.

At the same time as the Saxon War, Charles also carried out expeditions to bavaria and the khanates of Avar in the east. Bavaria, named after the Bavarian inhabitants (6th century), was once subordinate to the Merovingian dynasty and became independent in the mid-7th century. In 787 Charles chen soldiers on the Rhine, the Bavarian dukes succumbed, and their land became the earldom of the Frankish state. The Avar Khanate was an ally of Bavaria in Pannonia. After Charles conquered Bavaria, he came into conflict with the Khanate of Avar. After 8 years of war, it was finally conquered, burned and looted, leaving it desolate and uninhabited.

In 778, Charles led a large army over the Pyrenees and invaded Arab-controlled Spain for the first time, but failed. During the retreat, a rear guard was ambushed by the indigenous Basques while passing through the Lanceval Pass of the Pyrenees, and all officers and men, including commander Roland Knight, were heroically killed. This war was later processed by literary scholars into the famous French national epic "The Song of Roland". 23 years later, Charles once again crossed the Pyrenees on an expedition to Spain, finally capturing the city of Barcelona, seizing from the Arabs a vast area north of the River Erbro, establishing the "Spanish Frontier", and appointing one of his sons as governors of the region. By this time, Charles's kingdom had expanded to the equivalent of today's France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Germany, and Italy, making it the most powerful state in Western Europe in the early Middle Ages.

In 799, Pope Leo III was expelled by the Roman nobility and went to Charles to beg for help. Charles marched into Rome and restored the papal throne. In order to repay Charles, on the Christmas eve of 800 AD, when Charles was doing Mass and kneeling and praying in St. Peter's Church in Rome, the Pope suddenly put a gold crown on his head and coronated Charles, and the surrounding crowd cheered in unison, calling Charles "Emperor of the Romans". In this way, more than 300 years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, another Roman Empire appeared in Western Europe, and the Frankish king Charles became Charles the Great, and the Frankish kingdom became the "Charles Empire".