revolt, and the future of the dynasty, and attempted to
unify and reform a society embracing a welter of differ-
ent peoples within a community that eventually stretched
over one million square kilometers.
The kingdom Charles inherited from his father in
768 was much smaller, essentially modern France,
Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and western
Germany. At fi rst Charles shared the kingdom with his
younger brother Carloman. Corulership set the stage
for rivalry within the family, especially when Carloman
refused to aid in suppressing rebellions in Aquitaine, but
Carloman’s death in December 771 averted serious dy-
nastic tension. As sole king, Charles turned his attention
to solidifying control of political and military resources
and to crises outside his realm. A successful king in the
early Middle Ages was a successful warlord. Charles, as
had Pippin III and Charles Martel before him, succeeded
as a leader because he succeeded as a warrior. Charles
drew the warrior class, some 250 to 300 counts and their
followers, to his cause by sharing with them the spoils
of war and political authority. Aristocratic loyalty and
support provided the mainstay of Charles’s war machine.
Charles’s detailed orders to his warriors stipulating
when and where to mobilize and what equipment and
manpower to bring offer an unparalleled insight to his
command and control structure. His ability to make war
almost continually and most often successfully for more
than thirty years on many fronts attests to Charles’s
success as a military commander.
After Carloman’s death Charles’s armies began to
campaign outside Francia. In 772, rejecting his mother’s
efforts to ally with the Lombard kingdom (Charles had
even married a soon to be repudiated Lombard princess),
Charles responded to calls of Pope Hadrian I (772–795)
for help against the “pestiferous” Lombards. After a
siege of nine months the Lombard capital of Pavia fell
in 774 and Desiderius, the last Lombard king of the
two-century-old kingdom, was captured and confi ned
to the monastery of Corbie in northern Francia. Charles
became the king of the Lombards. During the siege of
Pavia, he made the fi rst ever visit by a Frankish king to
Rome. Charles’s political relationship to the pope was
ambiguous and Hadrian soon chafed under the growing
presence and infl uence of Frankish counts and ecclesi-
astics in Italy. Although linked to Desiderius by family
ties, Duke Tassilo III of Bavaria did not intervene in
the Lombard war. Tassilo earlier had agreed to become
a vassal of Pippin. When Charles required Tassilo to
renew his pledges in 781, the semi-independent duke
balked. After military threats and a decade of diplomatic
intrigue, Tassilo was confi ned to a monastery and in 794
“abdicated.” The annexation of Lombardy and Bavaria is
all the more impressive when viewed together with the
continuous confl ict in Saxony. One of the last centers of
vibrant Germanic paganism, the Saxon homeland east of
the Rhine was a hotbed of political resistance to Caro-
lingian aggression fueled by devotion to Saxon culture
and skillful exploitation of Frankish preoccupation in
other regions. Earlier in the eighth century Charles Mar-
tel fought against the Saxons, a struggle his grandson
continued in 772. Saxony was fi nally subdued in 804,
but not until after several uprisings led by the spirited
Widukind (also Wittekind), the massacre of forty-fi ve
hundred Saxon prisoners, and the forced deportation of
Saxons to Francia. The conquest and eventual Chris-
tianization of Saxony extended Carolingian power into
a region never controlled by the Roman Empire.
In 777 the emir of Barcelona, no doubt encouraged
by the success of Frankish arms, persuaded Charles
to invade Spain, which had been under Muslim con-
trol since 711. This bold venture ended in 778 in aCHARLEMAGNEBronze equestrian statue of Charlemagne (horse probably
later). Carolingian, 9th CE. © Erich Lessing/Art Resource,
New York.