CHARLEMAGNE~A key figure in the Western and Islamic world of Medieval Europe

 

Charlemagne’s most pressuring campaign pitted him against the Saxons, longtime adversaries and friends of the Franks whose conquest required more than 30 years of soldiers, food, weapons and plans. The campaign itself went from 772 to 804. This long, slow struggle led to the taking over of a large block of territory, was marked by raiding, broken truces, hostages, mass killings, deportation of rebellious Saxons and occasional Frankish defeats. The Frisians, who were Saxon allies living along the North Sea, were also forced down into submission.

 

While the conquest of Saxony was in progress, Charlemagne undertook other conquests. In 773 to 774, he answered the appeals of Pope Adrian I from 772 to 795 for protection by leading an expedition that went into Italy, which ended with his assumption of the Lombard crown and the annexation of north Italy. Charlemagne then created a subkingdom of Italy and left his son, Pippin to rule as king.

 

In 787 to 788 Charlemagne forcibly annexed Bavaria. That victory brought the Franks right to the Avars front door, Avars were Asiatic nomads who during the late 6th and 7th centuries had created a large empire inhabited mostly by conquered Slavs. By the 790's Avar resources and power was at an end. Charlemagne had obtained a massive selection of goods and claimed a block of land south of the Danube in Carinthia and Pannonia.

 

Charlemagne’s military successes had resulted in an ever growing and expanding border, which needed to be defended, as Charlemagne still had enemies. But through a combination of military force and diplomacy he established relatively stable relations with a variety of potentially dangerous ones out there, including the Lombard duchy of Benevento in southern Italy, Although the Italian scene was made more difficult by the Papal States, whose territorial boundaries remained complicated and whose head, the pope, had no clear political status relative to his Frankish protector, was now his neighbour as king of the Lombards.

 

The expanded Frankish presence in Italy and the Balkans intensified diplomatic encounters with Eastern emperors, strengthened the Frankish position with respect to the Eastern Roman Empire, shattered by internal disagreements and threatened by Muslim and Bulgar pressure on its eastern and northern frontal territories. Charlemagne also established friendly enough relationships with the Anglo-Saxon kings of Mercia and Northumbria, and the ruler of the kingdom of Asturias in northwestern Spain. Charlemagne elevated the Frankish kingdom to a position of great power in the European world.

 

Watch this video below which explains Charlemagne's expansion as King of the Franks.