This is Charlemagne or Charles the Great, the ruler of the Kingdom of the Franks in what is now France from 768 AD. So how did he become known as the continent’s father? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Charles was born on the 2nd of April in the year 747. He was named after his grandfather, Charles Martel, a very significant figure who had been Mayor of the Palace to the Merovingian rulers of the Kingdom of the Franks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Mayor was the most powerful political figure within the Merovingian kingdom, and Charles had led the famous Frankish defense of France against the Muslim invasion of the country by defeating them at the Battle of Tours in 732. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This was the first significant defeat of Muslim armies in Europe and prevented the Arab Caliphate from extending its control across much of the continent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In its aftermath, Charles Martel effectively used his power to displace the ineffective Merovingian royal family and made himself King of the Franks in all but name. <\/p>\n\n\n\n His son Pepin succeeded him on Martel’s passing in 741 and ten years later formalized his position by becoming the first Carolingian King of the Franks. Thus, when Pepin died in 768, he was succeeded by his son, the future Charlemagne. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although only twenty-one years of age at the time of his accession, Charles quickly expanded his territorial possessions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When he became its ruler, the Kingdom of the Franks was largely centered on modern-day France, with some additional territories in the Rhineland region of western Germany and much of Belgium. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the 770s, he began a blistering series of conquests, first bringing much of northern and central Italy under his rule after campaigning extensively against the Lombards, a Germanic people who had become the rulers of the plains of the north of the country to which they gave their name in the late sixth century. <\/p>\n\n\n\n He followed this by campaigning in southwestern France, where the Arabs still held the country of Toulouse and other regions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n By the 780s, he had pushed them back over the Pyrenees into the Iberian Peninsula and even conquered parts of Catalonia, seizing Barcelona in 797.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus, Charlemagne was central to the first steps in the Christian Reconquista<\/em> of Spain from the Muslims. Further victories followed, with Corsica, Sardinia, and the Balearic Islands under Frankish control by the end of the 790s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet the greatest territorial expansion was eastwards, with Charlemagne expanding the Carolingian Empire throughout Central Europe, including most of modern-day Germany, Austria, and parts of Croatia and Hungary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was the greatest empire that Western and Central Europe had seen since the fall of the Western Roman Empire three centuries earlier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It was not just that Charlemagne conquered a vast amount of lands. He also oversaw the spread of a new revitalized ‘European’ culture throughout his dominions from France to Hungary and from the North Sea south as far as the city of Rome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n His government’s scribes began copying ancient texts and preserving them for later cultures. New cathedrals, palaces, and civic buildings were constructed in the Romanesque architectural style in France, Italy, Germany, and northern Spain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He created a powerful bureaucracy to govern Western and Central Europe more effectively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The first stirrings of decidedly European literature emerged, one which no longer looked back to Rome but had a personality of its own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Roman Catholic Church’s role in European life was strengthened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Effectively this Carolingian Renaissance during Charlemagne’s long reign gave birth to a new culture, one which was specific to medieval Europe<\/a> rather than being comprised of vestiges of the Roman past. This is one of the major reasons why Charlemagne is deemed to be the ‘Father of Europe’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.historydefined.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/Charlemagne_and_Pope_Adrian_I.jpeg\")
The Establishment of the Carolingian Dynasty<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Carolingian Empire<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Carolingian Renaissance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Holy Roman Emperor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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