Such are the wars which this most puissant king waged during forty-seven years—a long reign—in divers parts of the earth with superlative skill and good fortune. By these he so nobly enlarged the kingdom of the Franks which he had taken over after his father Pepin, that great and powerful as it already was, he nearly doubled it. For previously those Franks called Eastern inhabited only that part of Gaul which lies between the Rhine and the Loire, the ocean and the Balearic Sea, and that part of Germany situate between Saxony and the Danube, the Rhine and the Saal which latter river divides the Thuringii from the Sorabi. The Alamanni and the Bavarians also belonged to the sovereignty of the Frankish kingdom. But Charles, by the wars I have enumerated, completely subjugated and made tributary first Aquitaine and Gascony and the whole range of the Pyrenean Mountains even as far as the Ebro, which river in Navarre crosses the most fertile lands of Spain and mingles its waters with the Balearic Sea, beneath the walls of the city Tortosa; then the whole of Italy from Aosta to lower Calabria where men place the boundaries of the Greeks and Beneventines, an extent of more than a thousand miles long; then Saxony which is no small part of Germany and is supposed to be twice as broad as the part in which the Franks dwell, with a length which is equal to that of the other; then both Pannonia and Dacia which lies on the other bank of the Danube, Istria too and Liburnia and Dalmatia, except the maritime towns which because of his friendly feeling for the Constantinopolitan emperor and a treaty to which they had both agreed Charles allowed him to hold; lastly all the wild and uncouth nations which inhabit Germany between the Rhine and the Vistula, the ocean and the Danube, who speak almost the same tongue but are widely different in character and in dress. Chief among these were the Welatabi, Sorabi, Abodriti, and Bæmanni, for these showed resistance in fight; the rest who were more numerous surrendered.
A Saxon Warrior
He also added glory to the kingdom by the friendly sentiments of certain kings and nations which he won to himself. Thus Alfonso, king of Galicia and Asturias was so linked to him by the bond of friendship that when he sent him letters or messengers he gave orders that he should be spoken of as Charles’ servant. The kings of the Scots too had been so bent to his will through his munificence that they never alluded to him in other terms than as their lord and called themselves his humble vassals. Letters from them to him still exist in which it may be seen that their attitude towards him was of this kind. Harun, king of the Persians who held well-nigh all the East if we except India, was in such hearty sympathy with the king that he valued his good will more than that of all the kings and princes in the world, thinking him alone worthy to be honoured by his regard and munificence. When the officers sent by Charles with offerings to the most sacred sepulchre and place of the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour came to Harun and told him what was the will of their master he not only allowed them to do what was required but even yielded up to them that revered and sacred spot to be registered as belonging to the sovereignty of Charles. When the ambassadors returned he sent his own to accompany them bearing splendid presents to the king with garments and spices and other rich products of the East, just as a few years before at Charles’ request he sent him the only elephant he then possessed. Even the Constantinopolitan emperors, Nicephorus, Michael, and Leo expressly sought after his friendly allegiance and sent him numerous embassies. To remove all source of possible offence to them on account of his having adopted the title of emperor, which might truly be suspected as in some sort an attempt to wrest from them the imperial supremacy, he entered into a most rigid treaty. For the power of the Franks was ever an object of suspicion to the Greeks and Romans, whence arose the Greek proverb, “Have a Frank for a friend and not for a neighbour.”
Great as the king was in enlarging the kingdom and in conquering foreign nations, busy as he was in affairs of this kind, he yet started a great number of works for the embellishment and convenience of the kingdom. Some of them he carried through to the finish. The chief place among these seems rightly to be assigned to the Basilica of the Holy Mother of God, which was built at Aachen, a miracle of workmanship, and to the bridge over the Rhine at Mainz, five hundred paces in length, so broad is the river at that place. This bridge, however, was ruined by fire a year before the king’s death, nor could it be restored on account of the nearness of his demise, although it was in his mind to replace the woodwork by stone. He also began some magnificent palaces—one not far from the town of Mainz near the village called Ingelheim and another at Nimeguen on the river Waal which flows past the island of the Batavians on the southern side. But above all he noted the sacred churches throughout the whole kingdom wherever they had fallen to ruin because of their age, and gave orders to the priests and fathers in whose care they were to superintend their restoration, appointing officials to see that his orders were carried out. He also constructed a fleet for the war against the Northmen, making dock yards for this purpose on the rivers of Gaul and Germany which flow into the North Sea; and because the Northmen ravaged the shores of Gaul and Germany by constant active inroads, he posted towers and outlooks in all the harbours and at the mouths of all those rivers which were navigable. By these defences he stopped the enemy from being able to pass. He did the same in the south on the coast of the provinces of Narbonne and Septimania, and all along the coast of Italy as far as Rome, in order to put a check on the Moors who had lately taken to piratical practices. By this means Italy suffered no harm from the Moors, nor Gaul and Germany from the Northmen in his days, with the exception that Civita Vecchia, a town of Etruria, was betrayed to the Moors who razed it to the ground, and certain islands in Frisia off the German coast were plundered by the Northmen.
Such was clearly the character of the king at once in the defence, in the enlargement and in the embellishment of his kingdom. We may well marvel at his gifts and at that superlative steadfastness which he showed in every circumstance whether of prosperity or adversity. Here I will begin and go on to talk of those other matters which belong to his inner life and his life in his home.
HIS FAMILY
When his father died he shared the kingdom with his brother and bore that brother’s quarrelsome envy with exemplary patience, so that all men marvelled that he could never be provoked into the slightest exhibition of angry conduct. At his mother’s instigation he married a daughter of Desiderius, king of the Lombards, but after a year, for what reason is not known, he put her aside and took Hildegard to wife, a Swabian lady of high nobility by whom he had three sons, to wit, Charles and Pepin and Louis, and the same number of daughters, Hrotrud, Bertrada, and Gisila. He also had three other daughters, Theoderada and Hiltrud by his wife Fastrada, a German lady of eastern Frankish origin, and a third, Rothaid, by a concubine whose name escapes my memory. When Fastrada died he married Liutgard of the Alamanni, but she bore him no children. After her death he had three concubines, Gerswinda, a Saxon girl, who bore him a daughter Adaltrud, Regina, the mother of Drogo and Hugh, and Adalinda from whom he begat Theoderic. His mother, Bertrada, lived with him to old age, being held in high honour. For he lavished upon her the greatest reverence, so that except on the occasion of his divorcing the daughter of Desiderius whom he had married under his mother’s persuasion, there never once rose a difference between them. Bertrada did not die until after the demise of Hildegard, having lived to see three grandsons and as many granddaughters in her son’s house. Charles had his mother buried with much honour in the church of Saint Dionysius, the same as that wherein lay his father. Her one sister, Gisila, who had devoted herself ever since her girlhood to a holy life, was treated by the king with the same pious affection that he had shown for his mother. She died a few years before him in the convent to which she had retired.
As for children he thought they should be so brought up, both sons and daughters, as to be first informed of those liberal studies to which he himself devoted his attention. For his sons as soon as their age permitted it, he ordered riding in the Frankish style, the practice of arms, and the chase; for his daughters, woolspinning, the use of distaff and spindle; they were to beware of becoming slothful by reason of their leisure, they were to be instructed in every virtuous occupation. Of his numerous family two sons and one daughter died before him, Charles the eldest and Pepin whom he had made king of Italy, and Hrotrud his eldest daughter who was betrothed to Constantine the emperor of the Greeks. Pepin left a son Bernhard and five daughters, Adalhaid, Atula, Guntrada, Berthaid, and Theoderada. The king showed marked evidence of his affection for them, allowing his grandson to succeed to his father’s kingdom and his granddaughters to be educated with his own daughters. The greatness of his soul was so eminent that he bore the death of his sons and of his daughter with exceeding patience which did in no wise detract from his affection, for his tears would not be held back. When he heard the news of the death of Adrian, the Roman pontiff and his chiefest friend, he wept as bitterly as if he had lost his dearest son or brother. For he showed the finest loyalty in his friendships, forming them readily and preserving them with the utmost constancy and he cherished the purest affection for those whom he had attached to himself by the ties of sympathy. So much care did he bestow on the education of his sons and daughters that he never took his meals at home without them. In travelling his sons rode by his side, his daughters followed close behind, their train being guarded by servants specially appointed for this purpose. So beautiful were his daughters and so tender was his affection for them that strange to say he would not consent to give any of them in marriage either to one of his own nation or to a foreigner, but he kept them all with him until his death in his house, saying he could not do without their society. On this account, although lucky in all else, he experienced the malice of ill fortune. Yet he hid his thoughts and behaved as if no suspicion of any evil had ever arisen about any of them, as if no rumours had ever been spread.