Charlemagne
King of the Franks, Holy Roman Emperor 800 CE
Also known as: Charles the Great, Karl der Grosse, Charles I
Charlemagne (c. 742–814) was the Frankish king crowned Emperor of the Romans in 800 CE. Quigley treats him as the typical case of the Carolingian effort to re-found a universal empire on the ruins of the Roman Mediterranean order — and as a partial, ultimately doomed, attempt at Stage-5 consolidation in early Western Civilization.
Carolingian universal empire
Quigley reads Charlemagne as the West's first serious post-Roman bid for universal monarchy. "Only Charlemagne (died 814) came close to achieving that dream, Barbarossa, Charles V, William II, or even Hitler being pale imitations. After Charlemagne, the state and public authority went into the The Dark Ages, while society and the Church survived" (T&H 424). The reconstituted state lasted only one reign: "The methods which Charlemagne used to preserve order within his empire helped to destroy it in the long run" — chiefly the doubling-down on "personal obligation to God to obey the ruler, to stay firm with oaths" which proved inadequate after the founder's death (WS 618). Like the early Frankish kings before him, Charlemagne "had five wives and several concubines, who produced numerous children, although he divided his empire among only three sons. Civil war became endemic" (WS 617).
Lecture-room verdict
In the Quigley Lectures Quigley offers a sharper verdict. "While all the books I read are full of praise of Charlemagne, Charlemagne was a willful man, trying to do the impossible by conquering practically the whole world. Fortunately, he failed, and the idea of Providential Deity weakened in the West until after 1400. The fundamental reason for this Carolingian political failure was" — Quigley argues across the lectures — the absence of an administrative substrate adequate to a transcontinental polity (Lectures 6). The failure of Charlemagne's bid, in Quigley's reading, allowed the decentralized feudal-and-municipal system to develop instead, which in turn became the matrix from which post-1000 CE Western expansion grew. Germanic and Frankish cavalry under Charlemagne also stabilized the military front against external pagan invasion (EoC 92).
Cited in
- weapons-systems-political-stability · p. 525 Quigley
Europeans had good composite bows, as Odysseus did or as Charlemagne did, they tended to use them only for hunting and not in war.
- weapons-systems-political-stability · p. 617 Quigley
Charlemagne, for example, had five wives and several concubines, who produced numerous children, although he divided his empire among only three sons. Civil war became endemic.
- weapons-systems-political-stability · p. 618 Quigley
The methods which Charlemagne used to preserve order within his empire helped to destroy it in the long run.
- quigley-lectures · p. 6 Quigley
While all the books I read are full of praise of Charlemagne, Charlemagne was a willful man, trying to do the impossible by conquering practically the whole world. Fortunately, he failed.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 424 Quigley
Only Charlemagne (died 814) came close to achieving that dream, Barbarossa, Charles V, William II, or even Hitler being pale imitations. After Charlemagne, the state and public authority went into the Dark Ages, while society and the Church survived.
- evolution-of-civilizations · p. 92 Quigley
Germanic and Frankish cavalry, under Charlemagne, Otto the Great, and others, had saved Western culture from numerous pagan threats.