disaster immortalized in the Song of Roland, the attack
on Charles’s rear guard by Basques in the Pyrenees.
Operations in the 790s in the Danube basin where the
Avars had been settled from the sixth century, met
greater success. As the partisans of the Lombards and
of Tassilo, these “new Huns” defi ned themselves as
enemies of the Carolingians. In 791 Charles initiated
an eastern campaign that Einhard described as second
only to the Saxon wars in its intensity and signifi cance.
By 796 Charles had crushed Avar power. Signifi cantly,
Einhard seemed most impressed by the fi fteen wagons,
each drawn by four oxen, that were required to haul
Avar treasure back to Francia. Three years later in 799
the Bretons in Brittany, who had long been foes of the
Franks, surrendered to Charles’s armies.
Charles’s ceaseless campaigns enriched and trans-
formed his kingdom. As the lands under his control
expanded to cover most of western Europe, the Caro-
lingians established contact with peoples on their pe-
riphery including Scandinavians, Slavs, Byzantines,
Muslims, and Anglo-Saxons. The patriarch of Jerusalem
as well as H a ̄rku ̄ n ar-Rashı ̄ d, the caliph of Baghdad,
and the imperial court at Constantinople exchanged
embassies and correspondence with Charles’s court.
But Charles’s primary focus lay in controlling the
heterogeneous lands and peoples of his vast domain
measuring some six hundred miles along each axis
from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean and from the
Atlantic to the Danube. Charles’s administrative and
political structure was multilayered. Although master
of all, Charles delegated power and authority to trusted
followers. His sons Louis and Pippin were appointed
sub-kings of Aquitaine and Italy, respectively, while
his brother-in-law Gerold was put in charge of Bavaria.
Charles established marches in dangerous border regions
whose governors controlled the local counts. Elsewhere
counts exercised military, judicial, and fi scal authority.
Charles tried to hold this centrifugal system of shared
authority together by several means. Royal capitularies,
documents organized by topics (capitula), established
and broadcast policy. The subjects of these—including
farm management, minting, heresy, religious reform,
justice, famine, warfare, education, feuds, homicide,
rape, widows, and orphans—suggests the range of his
concept of governance. Several capitularies addressed
specifi cally to the missi, the king’s personal representa-
tives dispatched throughout the kingdom to carry out
his wishes and to investigate local problems, point to
another level of administrative and political control.
Missi (from the Latin missus, “one who is sent out”) had
been used by Merovingian kings, but Charles extended
and regularized their use as agents of government, who
linked a highly fragmented political system to the king’s
household.
When he was not campaigning Charles settled in
favorite palaces at Frankfurt, Herstal, Ingelheim, Mainz,
Worms, and Thionville, in the heartlands of the Frankish
kingdom. After 794 he resided semipermanently at the
new palace complex at Aachen. The king’s household,
with its feasts, rituals, comings and goings, hunting ex-
peditions, and, in Aachen’s warm springs, group bathing,
formed a dynamic community. Carolingian poets memo-
rialized the conviviality of the royal entourage. Charles’s
household consisted of the seneschal who maintained
provisions, butlers, cupbearers, chamberlains, who took
care of the living quarters, the constable, who attended
the stable, a host of domestics, and family members. By
the end of his long life, Charles presided over a large,
three-generation family. Einhard mentions fi ve wives as
well as four concubines who were a part of Charles’s
household and bore at least sixteen children who sur-
vived infancy. His wives, especially Hildegard, Fastrada,
and Liutgard played important political and public roles,
as did his sons and daughters, some of whom became
bishops, abbots, and abbesses. Ironically, the religious
reform that Charles encouraged would shortly after his
death lead to condemnation of his Germanic warlord
lifestyle. In a widely reported dream, the monk Wetti
related in 824 that he had observed in the afterlife a wild
beast gnawing at Charles’s genitals as punishment for
his sexual sins.
The system of governance and administration that
Charles gradually built up depended on loyalty and com-
mitment to his policies. In practice the system was often
compromised by the personal and family interests of
offi cials who used their positions to enrich themselves.
Charges of corruption and abuse of power by rapacious
counts, judges, and even missi who succumbed to brib-
ery occur commonly in the sources, especially during the
last decade of Charles’s reign. Important family connec-
tions made it diffi cult to bring corrupt offi cials to justice.
In addition to periodic rebellions of conquered peoples,
Charles also faced serious challenges to his regime. In
785–786, a rebellion led by Count Hadrad of Thuringia
had to be brutally suppressed. A few years later in 792
one of Charles’s sons was discovered at the center of a
plot against the king’s life involving Frankish aristocrats.
After dealing swiftly with the rebels, Charles attempted
to enforce loyalty by legal and religious means. In 786,
789, 792, and again in 802 after he became emperor,
he required an ever widening group, which eventually
embraced all freemen, lay and clerical, over the age of
twelve, to swear personal loyalty to him. The 802 oath
was especially signifi cant, since it bound oath takers not
only to obey the emperor and protect his life, but also
to live Christian lives.
The nexus between politics and religion had long
been a feature of Frankish life and culture. CharlesCHARLEMAGNE