Charlemagne

I had the extreme delight to meet with a man by the name of Charlemagne and interview him to learn all about him. I may not be the first person to say this, but my, I think he was the greatest emperor of the Dark Ages! Enjoy...



Charlemagne



Q: Now, how exactly did someone like you rise to power?

A: My grandfather was actually Charles "The Hammer" Martel, so that had something to do with it! I was born in the year 742 to a king and queen. The 'crown' was passed down onto my father when my grandfather died, and upon my fathers’ death, the 'crown' was given to both my brother and I. We were told we must share the empire; each of us was given a half and had jurisdiction over our own. My brother and I had never been good at sharing, and we only ever communicated to each other through our poor mother. My brother met and untimely death (I swear, I had nothing to do with it) and I gained full power of all of our, or should I say my empire when I was a mere 24 years old.

Q: Could you tell me about some of your conquests while ruler?

A: I have had so many! This may take a while, but I will share with you what I have accomplished as ruler. Well, I formed the new Roman Empire when I was crowned and did my fair share to improve it. For example, our military was spectacular and never once lost a military conquest. I also thought it was very important to educate people, so I built chains of royal schools and got myself the craving for knowledge as well! I tried very hard to learn to read and write, which was unheard of for a warrior like myself to do. I like to think that it also set an example to all the young kids out there too. I ran 50 military campaigns, which was a very large amount for my day! But I would have to say one of the things I am the most proud of is my faith to Christianity during my rule. I also thought it was very inventive of me to split my kingdom into 350 counties, each with their own ruler. But I didn't want these people to think that they had too much power, so I made sure they knew I was watching them, and told them they must report to me.

Q: Christianity, eh? Could you explain how you incorporated that into your empire?

A: Talk about my faith! Why, yes, of course!  I very much enforced Gods rule. One really good way to tell you about how I did this was to explain to you my conquering of the Saxons. I conquered them, and if they had just gone with the program and embraced MY God, everything would have been fine, but no! They were worshipping some fake paegan God. Needless to say, I brutally murdered them. You cannot live under my domain and worship some fake! That is NOT ok! Because of my enforcement, I turned a lot of northern barbarians into Christians as well.

Q: How do you think this will impact people in about 1300 years from now, in the year 2010?

A: Hm, well I would have to say that my conversion of people to Christianity, especially barbarians will have a large impact on them. I would have to guess that my area of reign will stay mostly Christian, with some variations of the faith included. These people will be travelers, I can tell, and will spread my faith far! Or at least, I very much hope so!

Charlemagne died in the year 814, but he will be remembered, for enforcing his faith, Christianity, in such a way that people will have to take notice and possibly join the faith.