The Roman Empire, having fallen under the onslaught of the barbarians, left behind great nostalgic aspirations. The brilliance and grandeur of Ancient Rome were such that even conquerors tried to copy them. Underlying processes were taking place in Europe, wishing to revive a powerful unified state that would stretch, like Rome before, from the Atlantic Ocean across all the lands of Western Europe. Only the empire of Charlemagne was able to fulfill the dream of collecting the lands into a single state. A brief look at its history, rise and fall.
After the fall of Rome and imperial power, one of the leaders of the Germanic tribe of the Franks, Clovis, proclaims himself king at the end of the 5th century. From him began a dynasty called the Merovingians. In the 8th century Pepin the Short, mayor of the last Merovingian king, deposed his overlord in 751. The throne was taken by the son of Pepin - Charles, later called the Great. Being a born warrior and a talented commander, the new ruler not onlygave the name of an entire royal dynasty, but also managed to expand the borders of the Frankish state to an unprecedented scale. As a result of his military campaigns, a real superstate was formed - the empire of Charlemagne.
He inherited the reins early and was king for 46 years (from 768 to 814). During this time he took part in fifty military campaigns. As a result, thanks to his genius as a commander, Charles doubled the area of the kingdom. He annexed Bavaria and Italy. In the east, he conquered the Saxons and each time brutally suppressed their uprisings, and also successfully defeated the Avars Turks who threatened him. In the west, the empire of Charlemagne faced a more powerful enemy - the Saracens, who also led their conquest, capturing the Iberian Peninsula almost entirely. The ruler's troops managed to push them across the Ebro River.
In its heyday, around 800, the empire of Charlemagne stretched from the Ebro in the west to the Danube and Elbe in the east, in the north it went to the North Sea and the B altic, and in the south to the Mediterranean Sea. By strategically rightly granting the Pope of Rome temporal authority over the "papal province", the founder of the dynasty managed to get the support of the clergy, and at the same time, the pope was considered his vassal. In the year 800, on Christmas Day, Leo III, the Pope of Rome, placed the imperial crown on the great ruler and proclaimed him before the whole of Christendom "God, crowned Roman emperor."
The Empire of Charlemagne maintained diplomatic relations with both Byzantium and the Arab world. In an effort to revive the power of the Roman Empire and the brilliance of antiquity, the ruler founded in his capital, Aachen, something like a cultural center. There, at the invitation of the king, John Scott Eriugena, Alcuin, Paul the Deacon, Hraban Maurus and others came and worked. By imperial decree, schools were founded in various parts of the country, in which not only monks, but also secular people studied. This short flowering of culture has been called by historians the Carolingian Renaissance.
However, already the sons of Charles - Louis, Lothar and Charles the Bald - could not agree on the inheritance and began to wage civil strife with each other. In 843, the Treaty of Verdun was signed, according to which the territory was divided between the brothers. Despite the fact that the royal dynasty still existed, the Carolingian empire fell apart. The title of emperor becomes more and more ephemeral. In the XI century. in the kingdom of France, a new, Capetian dynasty begins (founder Hugo Capet).
