Empire-Builders

This episode focuses on the last chapters of the Carolingian Empire, in the days of Charlemagne's grandsons and great grandsons. What were the last Carolingians really like, and how did they navigate this time in flux? Our story coincides with the Viking Age, the birth of feudalism, and the origins of French & German statehood. This is the sixth episode in a series covering the Holy Roman Empire.

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This episode focuses on Louis the Pious, Charlemagne's deeply misunderstood son and heir.

This is the fifth episode in a series covering the Holy Roman Empire.

Sources & further reading:

Intro/Outro:

Succession HBO

We all saw the interview.

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In this episode, we cover Charlemagne's coronation, the Carolingian Renaissance, the administrative aspects of his vast realm, and conclude with an examination of Charlemagne the man.

We start with his coronation... By this point, Charlemagne had mastered the art of wartime logistics and organization, handed down news ways of governance and worship to conquered peoples, and soon he would inaugurate the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of renewed interest in the arts, sciences, and learning in general. 

All of this made him a worthy successor to Caesar and Augustus, and the moment now came for him to be recognized as such. It happened during Mass on Christmas day, 800 AD, in old Saint Peter’s Basilica, which was built upon the bones of martyrs in the eternal city of Rome.

Theme track used: The Age of Empire (Zero Project), re-composed by Stavros Stavrou

Audio used: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade clip

The founder of the Carolingian empire, Charlemagne, is often called the “father of Europe.” For the French and German people alike, he’s a little bit like a medieval George Washington. But unlike Washington, Charlemagne was not just statesman and general. He was an empire-builder living in a very different time, when might made right.

There is no single battle or campaign that earned Charlemagne his place in history. No fight against overwhelming odds or swift toppling of another empire. Instead, Charlemagne’s inclusion in the pantheon of military greats was earned through the scope and scale of his conquests, incremental as they were.

It is a certain brand of sheer persistence and unending patience that forged Charlemagne’s reputation as conqueror. That is the essence of why you hear as unlikely a source as Mike Tyson rank him alongside Alexander the Great and Napoleon.

Audio used: Mike Tyson in Sugar Ray Leonard interview

In the course of only twenty five years, Clovis -- the first of the Merovingians -- had united the Frankish people, adopted Roman Christianity, and laid the foundations for a kingdom that would last about two and half centuries. In the vision of Clovis' father, Childeric, he imagines that the Merovingian dynasty would transmogrify from a procession of mythic creatures into a pack of wild bears, wolves, and dogs. This is their story... as well as the prelude to the Carolingians. The vaunted ancestors of Charlemagne, the Carolingians first appear as mayors of the Merovingian palace in Paris before supplanting them.

Nonetheless, by the time of their fall, the Merovingians ruled Francia for 250 years. Ian Wood, a leading authority on the Merovingian period, has gone so far as to say that “No other state equalled the overall achievements of the Franks [under the Merovingians] in the sixth, seventh, and eight centuries.” Whether we go that far or not, we must acknowledge that the Merovingians have been overlooked for far too long. Their reign is too often seen as a gap in the late antique period, a dark age preceding the Carolingian renaissance. But that is a disservice to the Merovingians, without whom there would have been no Carolingians, and no Charlemagne.

Theme track used: The Age of Empire (Zero Project), re-composed by Stavros Stavrou

So there’s a lot of guys thinking about the Roman Empire lately, but that’s nothing new. Though the western half of their empire fell more than 1500 years ago, the Romans have never really gone away, leaving behind traces -- material and immaterial -- of their achievements in so many different realms of human endeavor: from civil engineering and hydraulics to political and legal reforms to linguistic and literary developments, and so much else.

More than any other empire-builders in the Western world, the Romans have been studied, admired, idealized, and emulated by succeeding empires right on through the twentieth century, for better and for worse. In this episode, I make the case that there is another empire worthy of our attention, one that went further than almost any other civilization in associating itself with ancient Rome, right down to its name. It will encompass the fall of ancient Rome, the origins of the Franks, and the rise of the Merovingian dynasty.

Theme track used: The Age of Empire (Zero Project), re-composed by Stavros Stavrou

Following in the footsteps of greatness is never an easy thing, especially at the dawn of history. This was the Bronze Age, when glory could not be bought or borrowed or bartered, except with the price of blood. Sure, there was praise to be earned for building roads and consecrating temples and giving grain to the hungry. All of that was very well and good. However, it was the virtues of war, not peace, that enabled a man to be great. There was no other playbook -- only the one written by Sargon in the blood of his enemies. And his successors followed it to the very letter, even as it became certain that their creation could never last. The last episode in our series on the Akkadian Empire, including a dramatic reading of an abridged version of the Curse of Akkad, one of the finest stories to emerge out of Mesopotamia.

Theme track used: The Age of Empire (Zero Project)

Let us, just for the moment, take a brief respite from the epic tales of gods, great men, and battles that dominate our narrative. Rest assured that we will return to these subjects soon enough because of how prominently they figure in the two centuries of Akkadian rule, so much so that normally sober-minded historians have referred to it as “the heroic chapter” of Bronze Age History. It is all too easy to forget that there were ordinary people out there, the playthings of these heroes, who spent their days eking out what then constituted an ordinary existence. Surrounded by violence and preoccupied with basic subsistence, the sons and daughters of this earliest of empires leave behind evidence of a sophisticated civilization, with a dynamic cultural, artistic, and intellectual scene that was both a continuation of their rich past but also evolving toward something grander.

Theme track used: The Age of Empire (Zero Project)

What kind of man does it take to build an empire? And not just any empire, but the very first in the history of man? What would it take to bring it into being when only kingdoms and cities had come before? For an answer, we can look at the story of Sargon of Akkad: Lover to Ishtar, Father to Enheduanna, Lord of Lies, King of Battle, Prophet of Empire.

In The Birth Legend of Sargon of Akkad, we are told that, as a mere infant, he was sent down the Euphrates in a basket of rushes sealed with bitumen, an origin story not unlike that of Moses. Raised as a simple gardener, Sargon of Akkad nonetheless goes down in history as the world's first emperor... So how did he do it?