Charlemagne

On Christmas Day 800, in St Peter's basilica in Rome, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor, reviving an imperial title that had lapsed in the West since the fifth century. The coronation crowned a career of conquest and consolidation that made the Frankish king master of most of western Europe. Born in 742, Charlemagne was the elder son of Pepin the Short, the first Carolingian king, and Bertrada of Laon. On Pepin's death in 768 the kingdom was divided between Charlemagne and his brother Carloman; relations between them were strained, but Carloman's death in 771 left Charlemagne sole ruler.

His campaigns extended Frankish power in every direction. In 773-774 he conquered the Lombard kingdom in Italy at the invitation of the papacy and assumed the Lombard crown himself. The subjugation of the Saxons occupied him intermittently for more than three decades and ended in their forced conversion and incorporation into the Frankish realm. An expedition into Spain in 778 ended with the ambush of his rearguard at Roncesvalles, an episode later transformed into the Song of Roland. He deposed his cousin Tassilo and annexed Bavaria in 788, and in the 790s his armies broke the power of the Avars on the Danube.

Charlemagne governed through written instructions known as capitularies and through traveling inspectors, the missi dominici, and he made the palace at Aachen his principal residence. He gathered scholars from across Europe, among them Alcuin of York, whose work in education, book production and the correction of texts is conventionally called the Carolingian renaissance.

Of his sons by his wife Hildegard, the two elder, Charles and Pepin of Italy, died in 810 and 811, leaving Louis, king of Aquitaine, as sole heir. Charlemagne crowned Louis co-emperor at Aachen in 813 and died there in January 814, where he was buried. His empire did not long survive intact, but his name — Carolus — gave the dynasty its label, and later French and German monarchies both looked back to him as a founder.