overcome, though not decisively; campaigns in the 790s brought the conquest of the
Avars; reprisals were launched against the rebellious Bretons during the later 8th century;
in the early 9th century, engagements with Muslims led to the formation of the Spanish
March along the Pyrénées. Above all, Charles faced the hostility of the Saxons to the
east, whom he struggled to subdue from 772 until 804—through forced conversions,
mass executions, and deportations as well as through battle. By the time these wars of
conquest ceased in the early 9th century, the Carolingian territories extended from the
English Channel to southern Italy, and from the Atlantic into eastern Germany.
Under Charlemagne, the basic units in the governance of so vast a realm were the
counties, each headed by a member of the upper aristocracy given the title of count. The
count maintained the peace, promulgated and enforced the laws, administered justice, and
levied taxes. Government operated primarily at this local level, and ultimately the court
had only limited control over the counts. The chief link between them and the central
administration were the missi dominici, noble laymen, bishops, and occasionally abbots
chosen to be the king’s representatives, who undertook tours of inspection for him
throughout the realm. They investigated charges of misconduct by local officials, assisted
in certain judicial proceedings, heard new oaths of loyalty to the sovereign, and published
new laws. The laws that the missi circulated and royal directives to
them were often recorded in documents known as capitularies, among them such
important works from Charlemagne’s reign as the Capitulary of Heristal (779) and the
Admonitio generalis (789). Yet then, as previously among the Franks, the foundation of
legislative action was the king’s spoken word. The capitularies from Charlemagne’s court
were merely records of what he had orally decreed and carried no legislative weight in
their own right. This legislative and administrative activity was matched by the cultural
and intellectual revival of the same period, forwarded by the artists and scholars—Alcuin,
Theodulf of Orléans, Paul the Deacon, Paulinus of Aquileia, and others—who gathered
around Charlemagne.
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