Over the years of reading this blog I imagine people eagerly devouring the latest birthday greetings dedicated to a Holy Roman Emperor with fascination. But as they peruse this collection of inbred Habsburgs, bottle happy Luxembourgs, cut throat Salians and appallingly dangerous Hohenstaufens they must wonder, how on earth did this kaleidoscopic circus freak of an empire get started? Well wonder no more gentle reader for your questions are about to be answered.
Happy birthday to Charlemagne, King of the Franks, the Lombards and those few Saxons he left alive. Also, Holy Roman Emperor. The first, the original, the one that all of the others for the next thousand years would fail to live up to.
Chukky Magnus as he was known to his friends started his career as King of the Franks ("The Franks" being what the French were calling themselves at the time although it included a decent chunk of what is now Germany too) courtesy of his father's timely death. His dynasty was a pretty freshly minted one. His father had started out as, effectively, CEO of the Merovingian kingdom of The Franks but one boardroom coup (and a compliant pope) later and suddenly The Franks was under new management.
For a while The Franks experimented with joint kingship in the shape of Chuck and his younger brother Carloman. However Carly soon died (of natural causes strangely enough) and Chuck settled down to sole rule. His first order of business was to beat the crap out of Aquitaine which thought it was remote enough from the rest of The Franks to ignore what Chukky was saying. Wrong, so very very wrong. Some educational atrocities later and the Aquitanians were nestled firmly back in the bosom of La Belle The Franks.
Starting in 773 Chuck decided to spread Christianity among the Saxons who were, at that point, still pagan. More accurately Chuck decided to spread death among the Saxons but such of those who managed to get themselves baptised in a hurry were granted the favour of not being killed on the spot. It would appear that the Saxons took a lot of killing because the war went on for about eighteen years. At the end of it the Saxons were incorporated into Chuck's expanding empire, or, more accurately Saxony was incorporated into the empire. Such Saxons as had survived the integration process were just dragged along for the ride.
You shouldn't think that butchering and/or converting Saxons was the only thing Chuck was getting up to during that time. That was more just his default setting. Whenever he didn't have much to do it was time to go Saxon slaughtering again. As it happened things were attracting his attention in a somewhat more high rent part of Europe at the same time.
You may recall I mentioned that Chucky boy's father had essentially tipped the previous dynasty of The Franks out of office and pinched their job and that he had done so with the support of the pope. Well the pope hadn't done that out of an altruistic desire to see The Franks under better government than they were currently enjoying. Put bluntly the popes had a problem with the Lombards, a bunch of semi barbarian thugs who had occupied much of northern Italy. The then pope had reached out to Chuck's father (who was also a semi barbarian thug but had the advantage of living further away) and asked for help. Chuck's father duly descended on the Lombard's and beat them up and the Pope suddenly found himself very understanding of his desire for kingship.
Fast forward a couple of decades and the good for nothing toerag currently occupying the Throne of St Peter was still having trouble with the Lombards. Once again he reached out to the ruler of The Franks for assistance. Said ruler was our lad Charles who took time out from Saxon stomping to take an army south of the Alps and spent a good deal of time beating the snot out of the Lombards and getting himself crowned the King of same. He went back home to mangle the Saxons a bit more but the Lombards obviously weren't people who learnt from experience and he had to come back and do the entire snot beating routine again. Then, since it was nearing Christmas and he was in the vicinity he dropped in on Rome for some sight seeing and a little Christmas shopping. While he was there the pope crowned him Holy Roman Emperor.
According to the official story Charlemagne wasn't very impressed with this initiative of the Pope's. After all the title didn't bring any more subjects or tax dollars or territory. What it did bring was a mess of Italian problems and the complication of having to get along with whoever was currently occupying the papal throne. If you were to believe Charlemagne's publicity team he had been blamelessly boring God in a cathedral when the pope had sneaked up behind him, dropped a crown on his head and said, "Tag, you're it".
A lot of people don't believe this story for the rather good reason that the pope was a greasy, two bit chancer who couldn't command the loyalty of his palace staff with any degree of confidence and who was only kept from being beaten to death in the streets of Rome by the appallingly dangerous warlord beside him who happened to rule most of western Europe. The likelihood of the pope doing something that ran a serious risk of pissing Charlemagne off was probably nil. So smart money tends to believe that the thing was done at least with Charlemagne's blessing. The question is why? All of those disadvantages I listed were real enough and the benefits didn't seem to outweigh having a strong sword arm and a massive army.
There is one possibility. Over on the right hand side of the continent was another Roman empire. The real one, founded by Augustus etc etc. The leadership of that empire practically had a collective aneurysm at the thought of the imperial title descending onto the no doubt lice filled head of an illiterate psychopath. However they had a bit of a disadvantage. At present they didn't have an emperor. What they had was an empress. She had been the wife of the previous emperor but one, however she outlived him. She was also the mother of the previous emperor but she outlived him too, admittedly she cheated a bit by having the lad murdered but it still counts. Her name was Irene and she had a problem. What with the son killing and various religious policies a lot of her subjects hated her guts. So when a marriage proposal from Charlemagne turned up in her inbox she was inclined to view it favourably.
There were definite advantages for both sides. Charlemagne could reunite the entire empire of the Romans under his own authority (and if Irene proved difficult he could pack her off to a convent). Irene would get the ultimate in bodyguards and reestablish imperial power in the west (and if Charlemagne proved difficult it wasn't as if she was inexperienced in regicide). It might not have been a marriage made in heaven but you can't help thinking a modern match making program might well pair this two up. Unfortunately it was not to be. Proving that The Franks wasn't the only nation that had difficulty recruiting reliable help Irene was overthrown by her minister of finance. Since he wasn't inclined to marry Charlemagne the entire idea was dropped.
Despite this failure Charlemagne's crowning as Holy Roman Emperor is seen as a seminal event in western European history. It marks the moment when politics ceased being obsessively local and officially inaugurated the region's emergence from the Dark Ages. At least it did. Nowadays interfering social historians have pointed out that the Dark Ages never really existed, that the replacement of a continent wide central authority with hundreds of minor statelets tearing at each others throats was merely an alternative lifestyle choice and in any event it was outrageous racism and the height of cultural imperialism to suggest that people might actually want running water, stable government and not dying of disease at the age of twelve.
So all in all the Holy Roman Empire must be counted a complete failure. No unifying marriage contract, no emergence from the Dark Ages and indeed no Dark Ages to emerge from. It's no wonder that a mere thousand years later they decided to wind the institution up for good.
As for Charlemagne, well after a lifetime of continual failure like that its not surprising to learn that he has vanished from the history books. Pretty much the only connection people in modern times are likely to have to him is the symphonic metal album put out by his distant descendant Sir Christopher Lee. I attach a youtube clip of this for your, well I hesitate to say, entertainment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFbPiUEA62A
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