Charlemagne’s End

Today’s installment concludes Charlemagne,
our selection from A Popular History of France from the EarliestTimes, Volume 1 by François P.G. Guizot published in 1869. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

If you have journeyed through all of the installments of this series, just one more to go and you will have completed a selection from the great works of fourteen thousand words. Congratulations!

Previously in Charlemagne.

Time: January 28, 814

After having put these first two lots under seal, he willed to preserve to himself his usual enjoyment of the third so long as he lived. But after his death, or voluntary renunciation of the things of this world, this same lot was to be subdivided into four portions. His intention was that the first should be added to the twenty-one portions which were to go to the metropolitan churches; the second set aside for his sons and daughters, and for the sons and daughters of his sons, and redivided among them in a just and proportionate manner; the third dedicated, according to the usage of Christians, to the necessities of the poor; and, lastly, the fourth distributed in the same way, under the name of alms, among the servants, of both sexes, of the palace for their lifetime. As for the books which he had amassed, a large number in his library, he decided that those who wished to have them might buy them at their proper value, and that the money which they produced should be distributed among the poor.

Having thus carefully regulated his own private affairs and bounty, he, two years later, in 813, took the measures necessary for the regulation, after his death, of public affairs. He had lost, in 811, his oldest son, Charles, who had been his constant companion in his wars, and, in 810, his second son, Pepin, whom he had made King of Italy; and he summoned to his side his third son, Louis, King of Aquitaine, who was destined to succeed him. He ordered the convocation of five local councils which were to assemble at Mayence, Rheims, Châlons, Tours, and Aries, for the purpose of bringing about, subject to the King’s ratification, the reforms necessary in the Church. Passing from the affairs of the Church to those of the State, he convoked at Aix-la-Chapelle a general assembly of bishops, abbots, counts, laic grandees, and of the entire people, and, holding council in his palace with the chief among them, “he invited them to make his son Louis king-emperor; whereto all assented, saying that it was very expedient, and pleasing, also, to the people. On Sunday in the next month, August, 813, Charlemagne repaired, crown on head, with his son Louis to the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle, laid upon the altar another crown, and, after praying, addressed to his son a solemn exhortation respecting all his duties as king toward God and the Church, toward his family and his people, asked him if he were fully resolved to fulfil them, and, at the answer that he was, bade him take the crown that lay upon the altar, and place it with his own hands upon his head, which Louis did amid the acclamations of all present, who cried, ‘Long live the emperor Louis!’ Charlemagne then declared his son emperor jointly with him, and ended the solemnity with these words: ‘Blessed be thou, O Lord God, who hast granted me grace to see with mine own eyes my son seated on my throne!'” And Louis set out again immediately for Aquitaine.

He was never to see his father again. Charlemagne, after his son’s departure, went out hunting, according to his custom, in the forest of Ardenne, and continued during the whole autumn his usual mode of life. “But in January, 814, he was taken ill,” says Eginhard, “of a violent fever, which kept him to his bed. Recurring forthwith to the remedy he ordinarily employed against fever, he abstained from all nourishment, persuaded that this diet would suffice to drive away or at the least assuage the malady; but added to the fever came that pain in the side which the Greeks call pleurisy; nevertheless the Emperor persisted in his abstinence, supporting his body only by drinks taken at long intervals; and on the seventh day after that he had taken to his bed, having received the holy communion,” he expired about 9 A.M., on Saturday, the 28th of January, 814, in his seventy-first year.

“After performance of ablutions and funeral duties, the corpse was carried away and buried, amid the profound mourning of all the people, in the church he had himself had built; and above his tomb there was put up a gilded arcade with his image and this superscription: ‘In this tomb reposeth the body of Charles, great and orthodox Emperor, who did gloriously extend the kingdom of the Franks, and did govern it happily for forty-seven years. He died at the age of seventy years, in the year of the Lord 814, in the seventh year of the Indiction, on the 5th of the Kalends of February.'”

If we sum up his designs and his achievements, we find an admirably sound idea and a vain dream, a great success and a great failure.

Charlemagne took in hand the work of placing upon a solid foundation the Frankish Christian dominion by stopping, in the North and South, the flood of barbarians and Arabs, paganism and Islamism. In that he succeeded; the inundations of Asiatic populations spent their force in vain against the Gallic frontier. Western and Christian Europe was placed, territorially, beyond reach of attacks from the foreigner and infidel. No sovereign, no human being, perhaps, ever rendered greater service to the civilization of the world.

Charlemagne formed another conception and made another attempt. Like more than one great barbaric warrior, he admired the Roman Empire that had fallen, its vastness all in one, and its powerful organization under the hand of a single master. He thought he could resuscitate it, durably, through the victory of a new people and a new faith, by the hand of Franks and Christians. With this view he labored to conquer, convert, and govern. He tried to be, at one and the same time, Caesar, Augustus, and Constantine. And for a moment he appeared to have succeeded; but the appearance passed away with himself. The unity of the empire and the absolute power of the emperor were buried in his grave. The Christian religion and human liberty set to work to prepare for Europe other governments and other destinies.

This ends our series of passages on Charlemagne by François P.G. Guizot from his book A Popular History of France from the EarliestTimes, Volume 1 published in 1869. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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