524. Charlemagne: Pagan Killer (Part 2)

“Here was a program to wet the ambitions of warlords as well as scholars, and to send men into battle beneath the fluttering of banners, the hiss of arrows, and the shadow of carrion crows…” The year is 777 and Charles the Great - Charlemagne - has ruled as joint king of the Franks alongside his brother, Carloman, for nine years. Now though his brother and greatest impediment to sole authority has died under mysterious circumstances. The sole successor to the mighty Carolingian dynasty, then, Charlemagne behaves differently from all the Frankish warlords that have come before him. In the aftermath of the once great Roman Empire, he seems to have modelled himself on the image an Augustus, pushing the already formidable kingdom that he has inherited towards greater and greater dominion. In his sights now are the Saxons, long growing fractious in Germany, and also the terrifying Lombards. The campaigns that ensued would be more ruthless than any before, with Charlemagne himself personally leading his men into battle. But his regime is not only one founded upon the blade of a sword and militaristic might, it is also a religious and educational revolution. It would utterly transform the west forever, introducing widespread writing and learning, and Christianising vast swathes of Europe - poor and elite alike. But Charlemagne’s total dominion of the West was still incomplete. What would happen next? Join Tom and Dominic as they delve deeper into the rise of the mighty Charlemagne: his transition to sole ruler of the Franks, his violent militaristic conquests, and a Christian regime that would change the world. _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Editor: Aaliyah Akude Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  Charles the Prince, girded boldly with gleaming arms, tamed this people through numerous blows and a thousand triumphs. He crushed it down and subjected it to himself with brandished sword. He dragged the battalions of those who in the depths of forests worshipped stock and stone into heavenly kingdoms. Afterwards, he poured over with the salvation bringing dew of baptism, the untaught Saxons, and sent them to the stars of heaven and led the new children of Christ into his hall. So that was a fellow called Paulinus. He was a scholar from northern Italy. Lovely poem.

• 2:06Tom Holland?

  I think it's a banger.

• 2:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  And Paulinus, not just a bishop, but a saint, Tom.

• 2:10Tom Holland?

  He becomes one in due course, not when he's written that poem, to be fair. But it's all in the future.

• 2:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. You get your sainthood partly as a reward for that beautiful poem.

• 2:18Tom Holland?

  Yes, like the poet laureate.

• 2:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  So, he writes this poem in the year 777.

• 2:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  And we are in the realm of Charlemagne, Charles the Great, Warlord of the West, great king, great emperor, as we will discover as this story continues. So, Tom, give us a little bit of context. Charlemagne has been joint king of the Frankish Empire for nine years with his brother Carloman, but a terrible thing has happened to Calaman. Calaman had a nosebleed, as listeners will remember, and has died. So Charlemagne is the last man standing. So give us a little bit of context. We're in the aftermath of the Roman Empire.

• 2:55Tom Holland?

  Yeah, so Charles, he rules the Franks. He's the son of Pepin, who's made himself king, getting rid of the Merovingian kings. He's the grandson of Charles Martell, great warlord. And Charles in Latin is Carolus. And so the dynasty that Pepin has founded and that Charlemagne belongs to is known by historians as the Carolingian dynasty. So Charles is top Carolingian, he's top Frank, and to be honest, he's top guy in Europe because he has put the whole of the old heartlands of the Roman Empire in his shadow. And he is now pushing eastwards. And that, I think, excellent poem that you read by Paulinus, who in due course, as we said, will go on to become a saint. This is celebrating the

• 3:38Tom Holland?

  conquest and the conversion of the Saxons. And these were a pagan people on the eastern flank of the Frankish Empire. Relations with the Franks had been terrible for ages and ages. They'd endlessly been kind of raiding Frankish lands, nicking their cattle, all that kind of stuff. And this had been a kind of grumbling cause of complaint under the Merovingians and then under the Carolingians. But Charlemagne, he's very much a guy for a radical solution. And he's piling right in and saying, okay, you know, I'm not going to put up with this. I'm going to conquer them. So he had gone to war against them in 772. So that's the year after he's become sole king. And this has lasted on and off

• 4:19Tom Holland?

  for five years. And now it seems to Paulinus that Charlemagne has succeeded in his aims, that the Saxons are conquered. It's absolutely brilliant. And so he salutes Charlemagne. May God grant Clement Prince as his reward for achieving such a victory. The sweet pastures of eternal life. It's all looking good for Charlemagne.

• 4:39Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, that's nice. So people who might be a little bit confused, these are Saxons in what is now Germany. This is not Anglo-Saxons.

• 4:46Tom Holland?

  Yes, so Saxony.

• 4:47Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, in Saxony, so Lower Saxony. To give people a sort of sense, that's the northern bit of kind of Western Germany at this point, though Saxony then.

• 4:55Tom Holland?

  Yeah, kind of below Denmark.

• 4:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, exactly. Right. So Charlemagne, Tom, Charles the Great, he's a funny character, isn't he, Charlemagne? Lots of people have heard of Charlemagne, but I think it's fair to say that lots of people know no more about him than his name. So he is a new figure. He is an entirely sui generis, an exceptional figure in European history, because he's different from all the warlords who've gone before him. Am I right?

• 5:20Tom Holland?

  He's not radically different. It's just that he is more impressive and he has more resources to draw on. And so therefore he can behave in a way that hasn't been seen in Western Europe for a very long time. So Peter Brown, the great historian of late antiquity, says of Charlemagne that he was not a warrior chieftain in a fragile epic mode. He trod with the heavy tread of a dominus, so a Roman lord, a lord of Roman determination, capable of deploying resources on an almost Roman scale. And these resources are preeminently military because he has inherited from Pepin and from his grandfather, Charles Martel,

• 6:02Tom Holland?

  by far the most menacing war machine in Europe. But he adds to that some very, very kind of distinctive personal qualities. So in the previous episode, we heard from Einhard, who was this very short scholar who wrote a biography of Charlemagne. And Einhard summed up Charlemagne as having two particularly striking character traits. He said that he had greatness of soul and a constant firmness of mind. And I guess you could, if you were not as prone to praising Charlemagne as Einhard was, you could say that these qualities correspond perhaps to having very broad horizons, a capacity to see things on a very large scale, and also a capacity. To take a very, very long view.

• 6:47Tom Holland?

  And to Einhard, these qualities remind him of perhaps the greatest of all Roman emperors, who is Augustus. And this is why Einhard models his biography on Suetonius's biography of Augustus. And there is something Roman about the approach that Charlemagne takes to the Saxons. So anyone who knows how the Romans behaved to the Germans, or indeed to the Gauls when they conquered them, they are murderous in their response to perceived slights or insults. And certainly Charlemagne's policy of outright conquest, we've got these kind of fractious barbarians, let's go and conquer them and pacify them. That is a very Roman approach. And there's an account from a chronicler describing Charlemagne's early campaigns against the Saxons.

• 7:32Tom Holland?

  And it will sound to people, I think, like the historians of Rome describing the onslaught of the legionaries against the barbarian people. So this chronicler writes, Charles devastated the lands of the Saxons with fire and sword and left them emptied of people. And when he targets a particularly celebrated Saxon shrine, he's described as destroying it utterly and taking away all the gold and silver he found there. And I think even when we say the Saxons, that again is a Frankish formulation that reflects the tendency that the Romans had, which was to kind of perceive pagan peoples, tribal peoples, peoples on the fringes of their civilization, in terms that they would understand. And of course, that's what the Romans had done to the Franks.

• 8:14Tom Holland?

  And now the Franks are doing it to these people that they kind of bundle together as Saxons.

• 8:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  So sort of sticking labels on people, very Roman thing to do to kind of classify people and say, these are these people and they have red hair and they, these are their habits and all that kind of thing.

• 8:27Tom Holland?

  Yes.

• 8:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  On the Franks, so the Franks presumably now at this point, Charlemagne very much sees himself as the heir, doesn't he, to the Roman inheritance, do you think?

• 8:35Tom Holland?

  I think he does. I mean, not actually to Augustus, but to the Christian emperors, who had ruled a great Christian realm. And of course, that is one point of difference between Charlemagne and Augustus is that Charlemagne is, you know, he's not just a great conqueror, but he is a Christian conqueror. And there's a kind of quality of paradox to that, because there hasn't really been. Such a figure before. So when he advances into the lands of the Saxons, he's not aiming just to conquer them. He wants to save their souls. He wants to bring them to Christ. And this great shrine that I described Charlemagne as destroying in seven seven two, it's not just that it's rich. It's obviously the fact that it, you know, it is a pagan shrine. It's fearsome. It's phallic. It's basically a massive great pole sticking up out of the Saxon

• 9:19Tom Holland?

  earth famed across Saxony and believed by the Saxons to uphold the very heavens themselves. And so Charlemagne chops it down to demonstrate that this isn't true, that it has no sacral potency whatsoever. And I guess even the looting of its treasures can be justified in terms of what churchmen in Charlemagne's realm are coming to describe as a process of correctio. So it's a Latin word which means the bringing of order where there is disorder, burnishing what has been besmeared and besmirched. And can I at this point quote for myself from Millennium?

• 9:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  Do.

• 9:58Tom Holland?

  So this programme, here was a programme to wet the ambitions of warlords as well as scholars and to send men into battle beneath the fluttering of banners, the hiss of arrows and the shadow of carrion crows quite as much as into the mildewed quiet of libraries.

• 10:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  And is that you or is that Paulinus?

• 10:15Tom Holland?

  Well, very hard to tell us apart, I think. You can see that he's been a great influence on my prose.

• 10:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  Clearly.

• 10:21Tom Holland?

  But there is this idea that Charlemagne cleaves to very, very passionately that in bringing sword and fire to the lands of the Saxons, he is also bringing order and essentially it's all for their own good. It's all for their own benefit.

• 10:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  But Saxony is not the only place that he's looking at, is he? Because he's looking beyond the frontiers of what was once Gaul, which is now Francia. And he's also looking to Italy, isn't he? Because, you know, Italy is still a bit of a lodestar for people who are living in the ruins of the Roman Empire, the inheritance of Rome and so on. So what's going on in Italy? Italy is now under the sway of the Lombards. Is that right?

• 10:58Tom Holland?

  Well, in the previous episode, we heard how the Pope in Rome, he had anointed Charlemagne's father. Thereby providing him with the religious legitimacy that he wanted. So it's become very important to the Carolingians. The papacy basically has licensed them to become kings. So a very important figure, but he, he's been menaced by the Lombards and essentially the quid pro quo between the Carolingians and the papacy is that the Pope will, you know, anoint kings and all that kind of stuff. And meanwhile, the Carolingians are expected to keep the Lombards, who are these very impotent people in the north of Italy, keep them on a kind of tight leash. And Charlemagne, whose ambitions are clearly considerable in a way that not even his fathers had been, even when he's in Saxony, is thinking about

• 11:42Tom Holland?

  what could I do against the Lombards? I mean, maybe I could just swallow up their kingdom. And so when he strips this great pagan shrine of all its treasure, I think he is thinking, you know, this is great. I can use this to essentially fund a war against the Lombards. And he will need it because the Lombards occupy a stretch of land that is dotted, as you said, with ancient Roman cities that have walls that are impressive. The Lombards are a kingdom a bit like the Franks. I mean, on a smaller scale, but kind of a challenge of a different order to the Saxons.

• 12:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  And they're also Germanic, is that right, the Lombards?

• 12:18Tom Holland?

  They are Germanic. They command the Alpine passes, so that's a potential problem. And there is also bad blood between Charlemagne and the Lombard king, who's a man called Desiderius, because Charlemagne had been married to the daughter of Desiderius for a year and then basically had dumped her, I think for diplomatic reasons rather than personal reasons, because he needed to marry someone else from Central Europe.

• 12:39Dominic Sandbrook?

  And Desiderius also is harboring a rival claimant to the throne of Francia. So basically, when this bloke died of a nosebleed, Charlemagne's brother, Carloman, his wife and sons had gone off and taken refuge with the Lombards, hadn't they?

• 12:55Tom Holland?

  Yes.

• 12:56Dominic Sandbrook?

  So that's a bit of a worry for Charlemagne, that the wife and the sons are hanging around in what's now Lombardy.

• 13:00Tom Holland?

  Well, I think that is probably actually the biggest consideration of all, because Charlemagne knows that the one thing that could really cripple his offensive capacity and the integrity of his empire is kind of factional rivalry with rivalries. Members of his own family. And we know that this is weighing on his mind because we have a life of Hadrian I, who's become Pope shortly after Charlemagne's come to power. And in this biography, it says that the wife and sons of the late Calum and King of the Franks had taken refuge with Desiderius, who was trying hard to make good his contention that these princes should assume the kingship of the Franks in the hope of stirring up dissensions in the kingdom of the Franks. And in fact, Desiderius writes to the Pope and says, look, I've got these two

• 13:44Tom Holland?

  boys, crown them, you know, anoint them. Right. Give them your legitimacy. Hadrian refuses because, you know, he essentially has to weigh up which of these two guys is likelier to win. And he decides that Charlemagne is the likelier. But he's still in an awkward position because Desiderius is between him and Charlemagne. And in fact, when Hadrian sends a messenger to Charlemagne saying, you know, please come to my rescue, I'm being menaced, he can't actually use the Alpine passes because they've been shut off. And so he has to send the messenger via Marseille, which then goes up to Charlemagne. And when Charlemagne gets this message, it confirms his worst anxieties, essentially that Desiderius will be using these two nephews to strike at him. And so he thinks, okay, I've got to go to war. Yeah.

• 14:29Tom Holland?

  So the summer of 773, Charles summons his peers, his warriors, his advisors to Geneva in Switzerland, holds a great council there. You know, he wants to get the support of his followers for the war that's to come. And then having got that, he advances southwards, he seizes control of the two main mountain passes over the Alps. And once he's done that, he then sends ambassadors to Desiderius. And you can see what his main target is, because even at this point, his prime anxiety is to get hold of the nephews. And he says to Desiderius, look, I am willing to hold off war, and I'm willing to pay you a frankly enormous amount of money

• 15:10Tom Holland?

  if you will hand these boys over to me. And Desiderius refuses. And Charlemagne, I think, is really quite surprised by this. Janet Nelson, in her brilliant biography of Charlemagne, offers an explanation for why Desiderius should have refused Charlemagne's offer. She writes, Charles underestimated one thing that was beyond price, the Lombard king's honour. What father does deals with the man who has repudiated his daughter? And she speaks the truth there.

• 15:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  Do you think that's plausible? I mean, Charlemagne is a man of real politique and so is Desiderius. Do you think Desiderius really is thinking, oh, I'm just really bitter about this family row and that's the single biggest thing in his decision making? Or do you think he thinks, no, I'd rather keep a hold of these boys because they're such a powerful political pawn for me?

• 15:54Tom Holland?

  I think a bit of both. I think if his honour had not been insulted, perhaps he might have taken the money and settled for peace.

• 15:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  Really? Okay.

• 16:00Tom Holland?

  Yes, I think so. I think the sense that he's been shamed before the eyes of his own people and of Christian Europe generally was clearly very strong. And so he decides that he's going to fight. And so war breaks out. Charles descends from the Alps into northern Italy and his immediate target is Pavia, because that is where Desiderius has set himself up. But it's also because, according to reports, that is where the two nephews are, the two princes.

• 16:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right.

• 16:25Tom Holland?

  Who I'm sure have been kept in a tower. However, when he gets there, Charlemagne finds that he's too late, that the princes have been sent away to Verona. And so he splits his forces. So the life of Hadrian, the Pope, we're told, Charles left most of his forces at Pavia and with a number of his bravest Franks moved rapidly towards Verona. And this is a move that clearly takes the defenders of Verona by surprise. And Charlemagne's sons and his wife, who has the brilliant name of Gerberga, they all surrender themselves to Charlemagne. Although, according to the life of Hadrian, Charlemagne's wives and sons immediately handed themselves over of their own free wills.

• 17:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, but believe that.

• 17:02Tom Holland?

  So it sounds slightly like there's some special pleading going on. And the intriguing thing is that from this point on, that is the last dimension of them. So.

• 17:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  And there were two boys, right?

• 17:11Tom Holland?

  Two boys.

• 17:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  Two boys. And the last we heard of them, they're in Verona. So they ended their lives literally as two gentlemen of Verona.

• 17:15Tom Holland?

  Well, I mean, they may have been, you know, tonsued, so had their hair shaved off and packed off to a monastery. But if they were, we don't hear about it.

• 17:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  They're probably been killed. They've been killed.

• 17:26Tom Holland?

  I mean, you know, maybe Charlemagne Richard III did. I mean, we don't know.

• 17:29Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right. Well, that's the end of them. What's going on in Pavia? The siege there is still continuing, right?

• 17:34Tom Holland?

  Yes, right the way through the winter, Desiderius holding out and Charles seems to have had a slight wobble. He abandons the siege and he goes south to Rome. So it's his first visit to Rome. And he goes to St. Peter's tomb and he prays. Is there and whether it is for Saint Peter to intercede with God to help him in the siege, or maybe, I mean, maybe it's the expression of a guilty conscience.

• 17:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 17:57Tom Holland?

  I mean, maybe he feels bad about what he's done to his nephews. We don't know. But it's clearly the case that when he goes back to Pavia, his morale has been boosted. He's back in the saddle, he's full of vigour and he prosecutes the siege with a kind of renewed sense of aggression. And if he was praying for God's assistance, then God gives it because a terrible plague breaks out in Pavia. And it causes such devastation that Desiderius basically surrenders. He has no choice.

• 18:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  Wow.

• 18:26Tom Holland?

  So again, quoting from the life of Hadrian, "The wrath of God raged and stormed against all the Lombards in that city. And they were so enfeebled by disease and death that the excellent King of the Franks captured the city together with Desiderius." And that essentially is the end, not just of Desiderius's ambitions, but of the independence of the Lombard Kingdom. And Desiderius is taken back to Francia. He is tonsed. He is sent to a monastery. And Lombardy, the kingdom isn't erased. Charlemagne becomes King of the Lombards. So from this point on, he is described in his charters as King of the Franks and of the Lombards. But Lombardy is now clearly a part of Charlemagne's empire and his power now extends right the way to Rome.

• 19:08Tom Holland?

  So it's a significant advance of the Frankish frontier.

• 19:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  And to put that into context, he is the first bloke presumably to rule unchallenged in Gaul and certainly the top half of Italy for what, 200 years maybe?

• 19:22Tom Holland?

  Oh, I mean, even longer. I mean, back to the time of fall of the Roman Empire in the West.

• 19:27Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 19:27Tom Holland?

  The Alps had always been a kind of frontier.

• 19:29Dominic Sandbrook?

  So the early 5th century, yeah. So that's an extraordinary achievement.

• 19:33Tom Holland?

  It is. And when you consider that on top of that, at this point, he thinks he's conquered Saxony. You know, and those are reaches of land that the Caesar's hadn't even ruled. I mean, he's starting to look very, very impressive. And the truth is that Charlemagne is a very great war leader indeed. He leads his men personally into battle. He conducts campaigns personally. The strategy is all his and it's very rare that.

• 19:57Tom Holland?

  There isn't a campaign being fought somewhere on the frontiers of the Frankish realm. So in seven ninety, one of the annals of Charlemagne's reign, so these are histories that record the doings, you know, in terms of what happened each year. The entry for seven ninety is simply the Franks did nothing, i.e. they didn't go to war. You know, this is the shortest entry we have in this annul, and it reflects the fact, you know, this is an amazing thing. There were no wars this year. It's the only time it happens. So every other year, there is military action, and it is taking place on all the various frontiers of Charlemagne's empire. So there's Spain. So we talked in the episode we did on the Battle of Torin in the previous one about how the Frankish kings have been pushing, let's call them the Arabs,

• 20:42Tom Holland?

  back from the Loire, back beyond the Pyrenees, and Charlemagne actually crosses the Pyrenees and takes the fight to the Arabs in Spain itself. He captures the town of Pamplona, pulls down its walls so that it can't be used against him, and then he returns across the Pyrenees. And this is a retreat that is very, very famous, because as his rear guard, which is guarding his baggage, is going through the pass of Rosas Valles, Rosivo, it is ambushed, and the baggage is taken. And the commander of this baggage train, who is one of Charlemagne's palatini, so the people who attend him in his palace, paladins, as they will come to be called,

• 21:25Tom Holland?

  Roland, the great paladin, he has a horn and he blows on the horn to signal to Charlemagne the disaster that is befalling him. And this will become the theme of one of the great, great medieval epics. I mean, it's a wonderful story, and we could perhaps at some point do an episode on it. But it's not strictly relevant to the life of Charlemagne himself, because all of that romance is massively overblown. It's not the great disaster that the poets would make it seem. Although, having said that, I mean, it's obviously not brilliant that he's lost all his luggage.

• 21:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  No.

• 21:55Tom Holland?

  And actually, from that point on, Charlemagne is pretty much content to leave the Pyrenees alone, at least until the beginning of the ninth century, as we will see.

• 22:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  But his real focus is Central Europe, right?

• 22:05Tom Holland?

  Yes, it is.

• 22:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  So Central Europe, there's another people who are called the Avars.

• 22:10Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 22:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  Who are based in what's now Hungary on the great plain of Pannonia. They are horse lords of the plains, aren't they?

• 22:15Tom Holland?

  They are. So they're a bit like the Huns, you know, they fire bows and arrows from horses. That's their thing.

• 22:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  They are not a Germanic people, are they, the Avars? Aren't they kind of Turkic or something like that?

• 22:24Tom Holland?

  Yes.

• 22:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  Maybe nomads from further east. Anyway, they're causing all kinds of trouble in northern Italy, in Germany. They're kind of ranging around and raiding and doing all this kind of thing. And Charlemagne decides they're his focus.

• 22:38Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 22:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  He's going to deal with them.

• 22:39Tom Holland?

  Well, the thing is that I think for a long time, the assumption has been among people like the Avars that it's cost free to go and raid a monastery or something, or to, you know, attack a town. There's nothing anyone can really do about it because they're so mobile. But, you know, this isn't Charlemagne's perspective at all. If people raid his kingdom, then he's going to go after them. And so that's exactly what he does. And in seven nine one, he leads what seems to be a very intimidating invasion, which he then has to abandon because there's a massive horse plague. So all his horses, about 90%, it's estimated of his horses get wiped out. And this seems to be really bad for him. However, it's much worse in the long run for the Avars because of course the plague spreads to Pannonia.

• 23:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 23:25Tom Holland?

  And if they lose their horses, then they're completely screwed because without horses, they can't do anything. Their entire offensive capability depends on their ability to shoot arrows from the saddle. So by the mid seven nineties, the Avars are being harried by the Franks, but their kingdom is starting to implode. So in seven nine five, the Avar Cargon, so the kind of Avar chieftain, is killed by his own men. One of his deputies then opens negotiations with Charlemagne, writes to him to surrender his land, his people and himself to the king, and to accept the Christian faith at the king's command. A Frankish strike force then advances against the great central palace of the Cargon. It's called the Ring.

• 24:09Tom Holland?

  Great kind of structure full of all the loot that's been taken from northern Italy and from Bavaria.

• 24:17Tom Holland?

  Franks take the whole lot and they pile it onto great wagons and it's driven back to Charlemagne's court back in Austrasia, the eastern Frankish kingdom. And Einhard probably saw it, Charlemagne's biographer, because he gives this description of all this treasure coming into town, drawn in fifteen carts, each pulled by four oxen and carrying great piles of gold and silver and precious robes of silk. And Einhard thinks this is great. He describes Charlemagne's victory over the Avars as the greatest and most terrible that he ever fought, but with one exception, and that exception is the war that Charlemagne fought against the Saxons.

• 24:58Tom Holland?

  Because in fact, the hope that Charlemagne had had and that Paulinus had had when writing that poem, that the war against the Saxons was over, that they had accepted defeat and had accepted baptism. This proves to be massively over optimistic because in fact, the war rages for decades. And it rages for decades for the same reason that the Romans had found it so hard to conquer Germany. Because despite their overwhelming military strength, the Franks find it a real struggle to kind of pin their opponents down, to force them to accept defeat once and for all.

• 25:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  Is that because the Saxons don't have a capital, they don't have state structures?

• 25:41Tom Holland?

  Right.

• 25:41Dominic Sandbrook?

  Their tribal confederation. So how can you ever beat them, I guess?

• 25:45Tom Holland?

  Yeah. And this ultimately is what had defeated the Romans. But Charlemagne, in a way, I mean, his policy is kind of even more unyielding, even more unstinting, even more merciless than the Romans had been. So pretty much every spring, the Franks are riding out to harry the Saxons. You know, if they've broken treaties, then they will be punished really brutally. Every autumn, before they retreat back to their bases, the Franks torch the harvests of the Saxons so that they will then starve through the winter. Wherever they find a settlement in a rebellious area, they will torch it. And from seven nine five onwards, and again, this is very Roman, the Franks adopt a policy of mass deportations.

• 26:28Tom Holland?

  So they are taking entire peoples, entire communities and transporting them deep into the Frankish Empire. And when they capture the Saxon elites, they're taking them as hostages, which again is very kind of Roman, and bringing them back to Charlemagne's court and kind of educating them as Christians. And as I say, these are atrocities on a Roman scale. But the truth is that Charlemagne's inspiration is probably not Roman, but in the Old Testament. Because the Pope, when he had crowned Pepin, Charlemagne's father, had hailed the Franks as a new Israel. And the example of Israelite warfare actually offers a king like Charlemagne, who wants to extirpate a pagan people, quite a lot of inspiration.

• 27:13Tom Holland?

  So in 782, there's a famous atrocity after a particularly violent uprising by Saxons who had supposedly accepted baptism and submitted to Charlemagne and then kind of turn against the Emasca priests, destroy churches and all of that. So Charlemagne orders that 4,500 prisoners be beheaded on a single day. And the likelihood is, is that in ordering this punishment, he is inspired by the example of King David in the Old Testament, who similarly, you know, we have this description in the Bible, "every two lengths of captives were put to death and the third length was allowed to live." So it may be that there were even more prisoners and Charlemagne spared those.

• 27:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. So if you're behaving in a biblical way, that's fine, isn't it?

• 27:57Tom Holland?

  So. Well, Roman and biblical. I mean, it's the fusing of the two great inspirations on the Carolindians. He's bringing it to bear on the Saxons. And it's a prosecution of total warfare on a scale that is so brutal that by the late 790s, Saxon resistance finally is starting to be broken. And, you know, this is a victory of an order that the Romans in Germany never really succeeded in winning. And to that extent, Charlemagne can celebrate it. But of course, there is an obvious and unsettling question that is hanging over the entire war and particularly the particularly brutal strategy that Charlemagne's been adopting

• 28:39Tom Holland?

  in the kind of final decade of that war, which is that the triumph might be worthy of Augustus, but is it worthy of a Christian? You know, what does Christ think about all this? And this really matters to Charlemagne because Charlemagne is a very devout Christian. And what he is doing, he's doing, as that poem written by Paulinus suggested that you quoted at the beginning of the show, he's doing it in the hope of winning eternal life. And, you know, what if the violence and the horror that he's inflicted? Actually is opening the gates of hell to him. And that is a very pressing question.

• 29:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  What if? Well, let's find out after the break whether he is going to get eternal life or whether he's going to hell. See you then.

• 29:24Tom Holland?

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• 30:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  Faith, as St Augustine said, is a voluntary thing and not a matter of coercion. A person can be drawn into faith, not forced into it. A person can be forced into baptism, but that person will not advance in faith unless he be an infant. Even after people have received the faith and baptism, their weak-reminded should be offered instruction with gentleness. For as the apostle Paul said when he wrote to his followers among the Galatians, "I have fed you not with meat, but with milk." So that was a letter written in 796 to a courtier in Charlemagne's train at the time when he's absolutely smiting the Saxons. Tom, about four seconds before I was about to read that, you said, oh, please, can you read that in a Yorkshire accent? Explain

• 31:35Dominic Sandbrook?

  to the listeners why you wanted to hear that.

• 31:39Tom Holland?

  Well, partly because I always enjoy hearing your Yorkshire accent.

• 31:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right.

• 31:42Tom Holland?

  But also because the author of that letter was from York. He was a Northumbrian, so an Anglo-Saxon called Alquin. And Alquin was a very distinguished scholar in the noblest traditions of the great achievements of Northumbrian scholarship.

• 31:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  Venerable Bede.

• 31:59Tom Holland?

  So he had been taught by a disciple of Bede. Exactly. So there's a kind of scholarly link between those two extraordinary people. And Einhard, again, the biography of Charlemagne, he thought Alquin was brilliant. He described him as the most learned man to be found anywhere.

• 32:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  Wow.

• 32:13Tom Holland?

  And the thing that's impressive about Alquin is that he's also very, very good at politics. He's kind of a very seasoned diplomat. So in 781, he gets sent by the Bishop of York, who basically wants to be an Archbishop. And there's some doubt about this. And so Alquin goes to Rome to negotiate the absolute, you know, confirmation that the Bishop of York is actually an Archbishop. And Alquin succeeds in doing that. And then he's going back through Italy when he runs into Charlemagne. And Charlemagne is all over him and says, please come and, you know, stay with me, stay in my court. And the reason for that is that Charlemagne, as well as being a very successful and on occasion brutal warlord, is also a man

• 32:57Tom Holland?

  who is devoted to learning, to scholarship, to kind of broadening the cultural horizons of himself and of his people. And he essentially, he wants a teacher. And Alquin is a brilliant teacher. And so he stays at Charlemagne's side. He goes back to England for a couple of years, but otherwise he stays in Francia from this point onwards. And from his letters, you can see he's a bit scared of Charlemagne. He's a bit nervous of him. But they do seem to have become Genuinely good friends. So Charlemagne has this massive bath complex and they hang out in the baths together, kind of.

• 33:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right.

• 33:37Tom Holland?

  You know, making jokes about Virgil and Alquín's a great japesster. He's a great one for a nickname. So he calls Charlemagne perhaps tellingly David, you know, as in King David. And it's all great banter and they get on tremendously well. And Alquín is by Charlemagne's side pretty continuously throughout this period. And then in seven nine six, he's quite elderly by this point. I think he's about 60. He retires to Tor, which of course is the great shrine of St. Martin. So it's the most significant of all the Frankish shrines. And there he becomes the abbot, but he continues to take an interest, obviously, in what's going on beyond the walls of the monastery. And in seven nine six, you know, which is the year that he's gone to Tor.

• 34:23Tom Holland?

  There is one thing more than anything else that is worrying Alquín. And essentially it's Charlemagne's policy in the east, his policy to the Saxons.

• 34:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right. And this is because he thinks Charlemagne's let himself down a bit by being so savage, by being so repressive, is it?

• 34:36Tom Holland?

  Essentially, yes. It's because what Charlemagne is doing is a very radical policy. It's not something that Christian kings and emperors have been in the habit of doing. Kind of imposing conversion at the point of a sword. People may have a vague sense that this is all that medieval kings did, but you know, certainly in the early, middle ages. And even back in the final years of the Christian emperor, this wasn't what was happening. Because the Roman assumption, which the Franks, I mean, seem to have inherited, is basically that to have faith in Christ is both a kind of a marker and a perk of being civilized. And the Christian God is so powerful, why would you want to share him with your enemies?

• 35:19Tom Holland?

  I mean, it's much better to keep him for yourself. But I think that the longer that Charlemagne fights the Saxons, the more obdurate the Saxons seem to be. The more he comes to think that his enemies are fighting in the shadow of demons. That he is making war not just against the Saxons themselves, but against these monstrous demons that they. Worship and that therefore, you know, he will never defeat the Saxons until he has also banished these terrifying and demonic gods from their lands. So in addition to his military strategy, he imposes this strategy essentially of trying to wipe paganism out with extreme prejudice. So in seven seventy six, Charlemagne imposes a treaty on the Saxons

• 36:04Tom Holland?

  that obliges them to accept baptism. They don't have any choice. And there's this kind of mass baptism in the river Lippi, kind of thousands and thousands are baptized. But then, of course, the moment he's gone, they all revert. And this then seems apostasy and Charlemagne is made even more furious. And so it becomes a kind of hideous cycle. In seven eight five, he pronounces that scorning to come to baptism, so refusing the offer of baptism, will henceforward merit death. And he also lists a whole host of other practices that are, you know, have been part of Saxon traditional way of life for goodness, how long. And these two are capital offences. So offering sacrifice to demons, as Charlemagne

• 36:46Tom Holland?

  describes it, cremation. So you're not allowed to do that. You have to bury a body or eating meat during Lent, so the forty days before Easter. And this is by miles the most brutal programme for bringing a people to Christ that anyone has ever attempted. And this is why Alquín objects to it. You know, he feels that this is not what a Christian king should be doing at all. And I think what sharpens this sense for Alquín is that he is an Anglo Saxon. And the Anglo Saxons remember how they had been converted, which is essentially by the example and the inspiration of holy men, not warriors. So whether it's Irish monks in the north who convert Northumbria, or the missionaries sent from Rome under Augustine,

• 37:30Tom Holland?

  who founds the Archbishop Rick in Canterbury. And I think the Anglo Saxons also have a feeling of kinship with the Saxons. There's a sense that, you know, they're cousins.

• 37:41Dominic Sandbrook?

  Of course, yeah.

• 37:42Tom Holland?

  And so this had been an inspiration for a lot of Anglo Saxon missionaries over the course of the eighth century to go to pagan Germany. So we talked about one of them in the previous episode, Boniface from Devon. And Boniface had gone out there and he'd certainly given no quarter to paganism. So like Charlemagne, he had been confronted with a great holy tree that had been sacred to Thor and he'd chopped it down and turned it into a church. But the thing about Boniface is he does this without kind of mailed men at his back. He is doing it as someone who is not carrying weapons. And even though Boniface was sponsored by Charles Martel, he never turns to the Frankish, you know, warlord and says, can you give me some men?

• 38:26Tom Holland?

  The whole point is that if you are confronted by armed warriors, then you allow them to cut you down. And this is what actually happens to Boniface. So in 754, he's hacked to death by Freesian pirates. The prayer book that he had in his hand and which he held up to try and stop the blow of the sword gets cuts all the way through it and is preserved as a holy relic. And it's an example to Christians of how you should properly convert pagans. You shouldn't be going in and, you know, massacring them and burning villages and things. This is Alquín's feeling.

• 38:52Dominic Sandbrook?

  So when Alquín, he looks at this, he tells Charlemagne, doesn't he? He has this image of an infant being given milk.

• 38:58Tom Holland?

  Yeah, he loves that.

• 38:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  Let peoples newly brought to Christ be nourished in a mild manner as infants are given milk. If you instruct them brutally, the risk then, their minds being weak, is they will vomit everything up. I mean, that's a pretty bold thing to write to this guy who's so powerful, to basically say, your entire policy is misguided and is actually counterproductive because they will vomit back up the faith that you're forcing down their throats.

• 39:21Tom Holland?

  Yeah, and of course, unspoken is also the thought that, you know, you are going against God's will in doing this. And I agree, it is brave of Alquín to do it. I mean, they may hang out in the baths and, you know, banter, but Charlemagne is still a very intimidating figure. But Alquín does write to him. And what's amazing is that Charlemagne seems to have taken it on the chin. So that same year, 796, he orders the programme of forcible baptisms to be eased. And then the following year, he issues a new charter for the Saxons, kind of easing off the prescriptions. I wouldn't say making the laws against paganism more liberal, that would be an anachronistic way of putting it, but making them slightly less punitive, I guess. So Alquín's take is that essentially you should

• 40:05Tom Holland?

  Monasteries rather than on kind of military forts to pacify the Saxons. Charlemagne doesn't go that far, you know, he continues to harry and burn and whatever. But I think there is a sense in which the monasteries that are built in the kind of the rear of the Saxons and which Charlemagne starts to plant over the eastern reaches of his kingdom. I mean, they have been compared by scholars to the great Roman legionary bases. You know, these are centres of Christian power from which Christianity can reach outwards and spread eastwards. And in that sense, it kind of perfectly fuses the double meaning of correctio, this Latin word for, you know,

• 40:43Tom Holland?

  bringing order where there's disorder, that it is a matter both for warriors with swords and for scholars and monks with pens. So there's this phrase, the Carolingian Renaissance. The Carolingians don't think that what they're doing is a renaissance because they think that what they're doing is simply carrying on traditions that reach back to the Christian Roman Empire, but that things need to be corrected. And so that's what the programme is all about. It's not a renaissance, it's a programme of correctio.

• 41:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right, and not just among the Saxons. Charlemagne also believes that his own people worthy of, is correction the right word here?

• 41:19Tom Holland?

  I think it is.

• 41:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  Okay, there's this line, let men be chosen for the task of improving knowledge, who have the will and ability to learn and also the desire to instruct others. So basically, it's a huge pedagogical, educational programme among his own people.

• 41:33Tom Holland?

  And himself, which is why he had got Alcuin, you know, he wanted a great teacher by his side. And I think the reason for this, it's a bit like, listeners may remember a while ago, we did an episode on Alfred. After Alfred's victories over the Vikings, his first aim is to restore the monasteries because he sees learning as fundamental to bringing his people to heaven, to winning them eternal life. And that is his duty as king. If he doesn't do that, if he doesn't succeed in bringing the souls under his charge to Christ, then he will answer for it at the day of judgment. And I think the same shadow hangs over Charlemagne. It's a really urgent, pressing mission for him. So it is kind of education, education.

• 42:15Tom Holland?

  Education, but it's not just education for its own sake. It's about getting his people to heaven. And that's why I think he's so keen on Alquín, because he has inherited from his father Pepin and his grandfather Charles Martel. A sense that actually the Anglo Saxons are best at this kind of thing. So Boniface, when he had gone out to convert the pagans, he'd actually also had to work quite hard among the people on the eastern flank of the Frankish Empire, who's supposedly been Christian for centuries, because he finds that they're in a terrible state. So he writes of the Frankish clergy, they spend their lives in debauchery, adultery and every kind of filth. And, you know, he's not writing that in any tone of jealousy. He's genuinely very, very, very appalled by this.

• 43:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  To be fair, it's what so many English writers down the centuries have said about the French, isn't it?

• 43:04Tom Holland?

  That's the first example, perhaps. And the other thing also that's very striking about Anglo Saxon scholars, when they come to Francia, you know, which was Gaul, a Roman province where people supposedly speak Latin. The Anglo Saxon scholars have learnt their Latin from books. They arrive in Gaul and they find the Latin being spoken by the Franks basically unintelligible. And the reason for that is that it's on the verge of becoming French, you know, it's a full thing. But to Alquín and his, his, his compadres, it's a sign that the Franks, you know, are hopelessly uneducated, that they've let their inheritance from the Romans slip and that therefore, you know, it's not just their morals and their, that need improving. It's also their ability to speak Latin.

• 43:47Tom Holland?

  And that matters because to the Anglo Saxons who had been converted by Roman missionaries, the association between Christianity and Romanitas is much stronger than it is among the Franks. So we talked about this before, for the Franks, Christianity had always been Gaelic. It had always been self sufficient within Gaul. It hadn't looked to Rome for its example. But for the Anglo Saxons, Rome is the great example. It's a pope who converted them. And so the fact that it's an Anglo Saxon like Alquín, who is in charge of the most significant monastery in Francia, is really important in integrating Frankish. Notions of Christianity into a kind of Europe-wide understanding and making it Roman.

• 44:31Tom Holland?

  So it's from this point onwards that you really start to have a kind of common Latin Christianity, rather than one that is a Christianity that consists of multiple different versions of it.

• 44:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right.

• 44:43Tom Holland?

  You know, one in Rome, one in Gaul, one in wherever.

• 44:46Dominic Sandbrook?

  And the great powerhouse of this process is Alcuin's monastery in Tours, isn't it? So Tours, obviously St. Martin, we've heard loads about St. Martin, how important he was for the Franks. So this is a real sort of hub of scholarship. They're copying out all these classical texts to try and improve the standard of Latin. And they're producing all these collections of scripture, aren't they? So the first, actually, these are the first Bibles, is that right? Explain to people who may be baffled by that, how these could possibly be the first Bibles.

• 45:14Tom Holland?

  So the word Bible comes from the Greek word Biblia, which means books. And Christian scriptures consist of lots of different books. And it had not previously been the habit to gather them within a single text. But Alcuin is all over this. There is a tradition of doing this, say, in the Northumbrian monasteries. And he brings this to Tours. And it's from this point on, really, that these collections of books, which are being assembled within the covers, you know, within a single set of covers, start to be known collectively as Biblia, i.e. a Bible. So it's from this point on that you start to get Bibles. And Alcuin's aim is to get as many of these Bibles out as he possibly can. And it's actually quite kind of information technology.

• 45:59Tom Holland?

  There's a monk in Tours, he picks up one of these Bibles and he's amazed that you get all the different books of the Old Testament and the New Testament in a single text. And he kind of exclaims, this is a library beyond compare. And it's a bit like when iPhones or iPads or whatever first came out, that people would say, you know, all the knowledge of the world is on this tiny little tablet, this tiny little phone. And Alquin is quite Steve Jobs because he has a massive emphasis, not just on the volume of data, but also that this data, these books should be easy to use, easy to read, that they should be beautiful, that the production qualities should be completely streamlined. And so the Bibles and other books as well that are being produced in

• 46:40Tom Holland?

  the scriptorium at Tours are written to be as user-friendly as possible. And essentially, when you look at a block of text now, written in the Roman script, so the script that English and French and German and everything uses, you are looking at a script that has been mediated by Carolingian scholars, by Alquin and his fellow monks. So it's under Alquin's guidance that, for the first time, words don't run into one another. So if you think of a Roman inscription, you know, there's no spaces, but now you start to get spaces. Also, the use of capitals to indicate new sentences, again, a complete innovation. And my favourite innovation, the Carolingians start to introduce new punctuation marks.

• 47:23Tom Holland?

  And in a sentence where there is doubt being expressed, they start to use a kind of lightning flash, which, over the course of time, will evolve to become the question mark.

• 47:34Dominic Sandbrook?

  Wow.

• 47:35Tom Holland?

  It's brilliant. So, again, Alquin, you know, he's all about the milk of doctrine and all that, but he also, he's the inventor of the Bible and the question mark.

• 47:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  I'd never thought of a question mark as a lightning bolt over a full stop, but that, of course, is kind of what it is, a slightly wobbly lightning bolt.

• 47:51Tom Holland?

  Yes, so questioning the full stop, exactly.

• 47:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  So they're basically pumping these out, all these Bibles.

• 47:57Tom Holland?

  Yeah.

• 47:57Dominic Sandbrook?

  They're readable, they're in a very beautiful, user-friendly kind of format, and they are presumably a tool of uniformity, right?

• 48:06Tom Holland?

  Exactly.

• 48:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  Across Charlemagne's empire. That's what he's after.

• 48:10Tom Holland?

  Yes, he's creating a common Christian culture.

• 48:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 48:13Tom Holland?

  And of course, texts are for those who can read, so these Bibles are kind of going to monasteries or whatever. But Charlemagne and Alquin are both very, very concerned to reach out into the countryside. So people may wonder, it's a long time since Clovis was converted, the Frankish elites, the aristocracy, all of that are clearly very, very Christian. But what about the peasants out in the countryside? What do they know about it? Probably very little. And these are the people that Charlemagne is also very, very concerned to reach. And the key people here are the parish priests. And Boniface had complained about the fact that they're hopeless, they don't know anything. And Alcwan also actually says he worries that the priests, you know, they don't really know what they're talking about.

• 48:58Tom Holland?

  And so, again, he devises kind of little books, little format books that can be slipped into a pouch or something that give the basics of Christian doctrine, give the Lord's Prayer, give the creed, give various key passages from scripture or whatever. And these are sent out into the parishes, out into the countryside. And it's an unprecedented experiment in the West in mass education. And within a few decades, the bishops in Francia are able to assume that priests should have a basic modicum of knowledge. And in fact, there's this wonderful account of a priest in about the kind of the 840s, who gets imprisoned by his bishop for having forgotten everything that he had learned,

• 49:43Tom Holland?

  which always kind of sticks in my mind. Wow, I mean, if you got punished for forgetting everything you'd learned, that would be a real problem. And this, again, it's hard to emphasise how significant a moment this is in the history of Western Europe. Because this is the moment when the process of Christianisation really starts to happen. It's not just for the elites anymore, it's reaching out into the countryside. And the most basic rhythms of life, whether it's kind of annual or whether it's from cradle to grave, are starting to be marinated in Christianity. So, you know, if you're drawing up a charter, a legal agreement,

• 50:26Tom Holland?

  if you're tending to a sick animal, if you're working out where you should dig a well, when you should begin the harvest. All of these questions are starting to be framed in Christian terms by priests who have been given the kind of intellectual know-how and ammunition that enables them to do this.

• 50:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  Because in every village, every town, every hamlet, there is going to be some parish priest or something who sits standing there with his little book, you know, this is the prayer for this occasion, this is what Jesus would do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, in a way that wasn't the case 100 or 200 years before this.

• 50:59Tom Holland?

  Yeah, and Charlemagne has prescribed that every priest should know the Lord's Prayer and should know the creed, and that they should in turn instruct everybody in his kingdom in the creed and in the Lord's Prayer. And so that is giving to people kind of fundamentals of familiarity with Christianity that they hadn't previously had. And it has a kind of saturating effect. And the consequences of that are utterly profound for the future of European culture. It means that people start to take for granted assumptions that are rooted in Christianity to the point where they don't even realise, you know, where these assumptions have come from. And I think it's in this sense that you can call Charlemagne

• 51:43Tom Holland?

  the father of Europe. So this is a phrase that is being applied to him within his own lifetime. I mean, in all kinds of ways, it's a ridiculous thing to call him, because as we will see, his empire actually doesn't last very long. But I think in this one sense, the Christianisation of people out in the reaches of the countryside, he does deserve that title.

• 52:02Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right.

• 52:02Tom Holland?

  But of course, Dominic, father of Europe is not the only title that he will end up with.

• 52:08Dominic Sandbrook?

  No, he ends up with a much grander title.

• 52:10Tom Holland?

  He does.

• 52:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  So maybe we will explore the story of that grander title, his imperial title, in the final episode. And because we're feeling festive, Tom, we will explore that story. The climax of this mighty series, it will be out not on Thursday, as usual, but it'll be on Wednesday, Christmas Day, the 25th of December. And there is actually a very good historical reason for that, isn't there, which we will explore next time. Because obviously you could listen to it straight away if you're a member of the Rest is History Club, and you can always join that club at therestishistory.com. But the best time to listen to that episode is definitely going to be Christmas Day. It's one of the most,

• 52:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  I read in your notes, one of the most iconic moments in the whole of European history. The scene is Rome, the year is AD 800, and the date is Christmas Day. So please join us for that. And on that bombshell, goodbye.

• 53:07Tom Holland?

  Bye bye.

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