The reign of Charlemagne extends over 46 years, 43 of which he enjoyed as sole sovereign after the death of his brother, and during the last 14 of which he had mounted to that mirac ulous position which earned him the title of emperor of the West and has caused him to fill not only the legends of Europe, but also, as with an original light, all the beginnings of modern European history. His period, there fore, is one of the many of which we can say that the uninterrupted presence of one man at the head of a state for a gives that period a peculiar unity and significance. This is often true when the man is merely a symbol; it is particularly true in a semi-barbanc dition of society, when the man happens also to be of military virtue and a successful war rior. That the personal character of Charle magne determined this wonderful episode in French history it would be an exaggeration to say, but that personal character made the epi sode possible; these 40 years and more are full of his individual effort and they have some thing personal and epic about them, like the eras which lie behind recorded history at the origin of every civilization.
He was 26 when his father died. Before he was 30 he had determined to extend civiliza tion into the Saxon forests and he had begun to do so. In his 32d year he crossed the Alps; in his 33d (in 774) he destroyed the power of the Lombards in Italy, and for the second time confirmed, as his father had confirmed, the tem poral power of the papacy. The next year he was back again in North Germany, and the next year, he returned again to Italy; the year after that, for the third time, he was conquering among pagans of Saxony, and this time received at least the oath of their reluctant allegiance. The next year he was off again over the Pyre nees, negotiating with, pressing back, harassed by, but checking, the Mohammedans. The Sax ons rose behind him; he hurried north again.
In 781 he is yet again in Italy. He was not and these first 14 years of his had been as full of violent and successful war as were the first 14 years of Napoleon. This elegy of rapidity and success, backed by a sort of renaissance of the Gallic spirit, so powerfully struck the imagination of the time as to make him, even in that period of rapid decay or transformation, the necessary leader of a united Christendom. It is from these swarming campaigns that the first new songs, or rather epics, of our modern Christian civilization drew their inspiration, notably from that check or defeat of his rear guard in the pass of the Imus Pyrmnaaus as he was retreating from Spain, a disaster in which his nephew Roland died and from whose mem ory sprang the noblest of Christian poems, the 'Song of Roland.' On Christmas Day of the
year 800 the culmination of these campaigns saw him crowned in Rome Emperor of the West by the Pope. The old title thus revived was but a symbolic name. He himself could exercise central and imperial power in a man ner, only distantly resembling the old Roman model upon which his title was and in the century that succeeded him that title be came little more than a name. But it can be said with regard to the title itself and to his individual occupation of it, that it revived, just before the memory of such an institution would have decayed, the tradition of an Europe united under a military head. That tradition has never wholly disappeared, and, fantastic as such a question may seem to-day, shall the future see it revived? The remaining years of his life, though all around the frontiers of his empire the last effort of anti-Christian forces was ready to be made, were full of a sort of tranquillity and splendor which the insufficient knowledge of the time might vaguely compare to the ancient authority. of Rome. He died 28 Jan. 814, at the beginning of his 72d year, and was buried ex actly upon the confines of the two languages which he spoke, upon, the limits of the civiliza tion which he had preserved, in the old Roman watering-place of Aqua, called since his time Aix-la-Chapelle, his favorite residence. There, in a church long since rebuilt, under the in fluence of mediaeval French architecture, he 'still lies, surrounded by modern architecture more appalling than most that is to be dis covered even in the rapid industrial develop ment of North •Germany in our time.
The experiment to which Charlemagne had devoted such energy and in which he had achieved such success, turned out both at the time and in the ,judgment of long future gen erations for more than he or his coadjutors had iptended.. The vigorous and united symbol of Christian and civilized government which his reign had afforded served as a bridge. It pre vented Christendom from too often forgetting. (though it necessarily, largely forgot and blurred) its Roman origins• and it afforded also a halting place to which the trials and the new youth of Europe could look back in succeeding centuries,. The reign of Charlemagne is like a holiday, or like a light in the night. It breaks the continuity of the Dark Ages and largely through his intellectual vigor enables us to un derstand the transformation of Europe from the antique to the modern.