Charlemagne: The Bloodthirsty Emperor of Dark Age Europe | Charlemagne | Chronicle

this channel is part of the history hit network [Music] [Music] [Music] can [Music] [Music] [Music] when charlemagne was crowned emperor on the 25th of december 800 he was at the peak of his power he ruled a realm that encompassed almost the whole of europe charlemagne was the most powerful ruler of his time even the pope in rome was intimidated by him only one person can tell the story of charlemagne's life first hand namely his former comrade in arms the court scholar einhardt is years after charlemagne's death his court scholar einhard wrote the most famous medieval biography of a ruler it depicts charlemagne as superhuman as a being of light but was he really like that what's myth and what's reality this story starts in turbulent times pepin charlemagne's father wanted to be king of the franks but without having inherited the crown the ambitious pepin was hoping for a son in order to be able to found a dynasty when the longed for son and heir was born in april 748 four years had passed since his marriage to betrader became very anxious after her marriage that she didn't conceive a child and her whole position of course not to mention her husband's position depended on having a child and having a boy child she apparently she prayed rather desperately to become fertile to become pregnant and she did then have charmaine and i think the relief that she must have felt at that moment was extraordinary yes [Music] history hit is a streaming platform that is just for history fans with fantastic documentaries covering fascinating figures and moments in history from all over the world with documentaries featuring great medieval figures and events from the battle of hastings to the last of the vikings history hit has unrivaled access to peerless archival materials and the world's best historians we're committed to bringing history fans award-winning documentaries and podcasts that you cannot find anywhere else sign up now for a 14-day free trial and chronicle fans get 50 off their first three months just be sure to use the code chronicle at checkout the realm of the franks which consisted of many small principalities had been governed by the merivindians for generations but charlemagne's father pepin had good arguments with which he persuaded the princes to venture a revolution under his leadership [Music] pepin wanted to rule a huge realm under the merovingian dynasty the territory of the franks had steadily expanded in addition to the original settlement areas on the rhine and the moselle large parts of modern-day france had also been incorporated over the course of three centuries the frankish empire had become a major power in central europe [Music] the pope wants to tip the scales in pepin's favor pepin wanted the revolution to take place with his blessings [Music] the pope in rome had become a highly visible authority in the frankish empire pepin seems to have had the need to get a legitimation beyond that of the frankish nobility and the frankish bishops in order to strengthen his political ambitions and so he didn't have much of an option turning to the pope was the obvious choice the new carolingian dynasty now had two heirs to the throne charlemagne and his brother carla man even as adolescents they saw themselves more as rivals than brothers [Music] [Music] [Music] yeah so far after it the younger and cunning carla man often had the upper hand in contests that must have been humiliating for charlemagne [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] the provence is [Music] at first glance the division of the empire seems balanced nevertheless charlemagne must have felt at a disadvantage his section stretched around that of his brother in a semicircle and that meant significantly longer distances the division of the empire that pepin devised for his sons is strange because it's not geographically coherent charlemagne's territories surrounded khalimans in a semi-circle and both of them got a portion of aquitaine which had been a very sought after area since the time of the merovingians one reason for this strange division was definitely that pepin wanted to force his sons to get along but that's exactly what they were unwilling and unable to do they had a clear rivalry about being the more dominant ruler in the empire the tombs of the frankish kings are in the famous basilica of sandini charlemagne's father pepin was also buried here next to his wife bertrada [Music] when he divided the empire between his sons he couldn't have suspected what consequences this would [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] my [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] relations between royal princes were always likely to be tense and difficult but in this case the evidence is very clear that that was so and i wonder if it went back to this special feeling that she had for her eldest boy uh she certainly tried to make peace between her two sons when they when it became clear after their father's death that they weren't getting on very well but i think the one that she preferred was was charles [Music] and ron ferguson with [Music] foreign [Music] there was a rebellion on the empire's borders in such an event the plan was for the two brothers to combine their military efforts aquitaine which had been conquered by king pepin was rebelling against the frankish occupiers under its former ruler hunald 500 kilometers from the heart of the crisis charlemagne was expecting his brother in moncontour to go to battle with him against aquitaine but carliman didn't show up at the agreed meeting place [Music] [Music] m [Music] foreign it remains unclear why kaliman refused to help did he want to put his brother into a difficult position did he have an alliance with aquitaine maybe there were old hostilities between him and his brother the sources don't really make it clear but it's certain that after the quarrel between the two charlemagne was on his own [Music] charlemagne was in the trap his brother had laid for him calling off the military campaign would have been a display of weakness risking it on his own would have been a huge gamble because charlemagne couldn't afford a defeat a king only remains king when the luck of battle and therefore god is on his side [Music] maybe charlemagne threw himself into such an adventure with confidence because he possessed the latest weapons and technology of war that at least is suggested by a valuable document in the monastic library of sangalan it's one of the oldest and largest libraries in the world [Music] a precious manuscript from the time of the carolingians is kept here the golden salter written in gold inc it depicts the franks attacking with bows and arrows and also armed with swords and shields the soldiers are wearing chain mail and scale armor for protection highly sophisticated equipment for the time [Music] this army that charlemagne feels is well equipped and more importantly the part of the army which the enemy sees first is an iron army it is terrifying an experiment will reveal the speed and penetrative power of an arrow the arrow is filmed with a high-speed camera for this purpose [Music] a soap torso with a density comparable to that of the human body will serve as a dummy the distance between the archer and the dummy is exactly 10 meters at 3 000 frames per second the camera records the bow shots so what do we have for the speed of the arrow now well we calculated the 45 meters per second for the error and this translates to 162 kilometers per hour that's fast [Music] what protection did the chainmail and scale armor afford were they the real secret weapon of the frankish army [Music] the male armor which is the most important form of armor that they used at this time made of interlocking rings was primarily designed as a protection against swords spears cutting weapons it was not very effective against arrows as we see in our tests but it will stop some arrows the chainmail alone rarely wards off arrows but it reduces the impact so much that the deadly arrowhead can be stopped safely by the doublet below even arrows are thwarted by the frankish scale armor however in staggered columns the frankish army penetrated deep into the aquitaine territory defeating the enemy warriors usually through fatal attacks on the flanks [Music] the main factor that causes the military successes of charlemagne is in fact quite simply money he rules over a state with an expanding economy this economy has industry small industry but important because it enables them to manufacture large quantities of weaponry and armor [Music] [Music] [Applause] after this victory charlemagne declared the whole of aquitaine his thereby annexing the area his brother carla man had originally possessed [Music] charlemagne legitimized his reign through his successful military campaign he showed his entourage that he was a soldier king who could be victorious and that's always good for him as king his brother might not have thought about what would happen if his older brother won he as the younger brother would be at a disadvantaged we could speculate that it would maybe have been better for khaliman to have helped his brother pacify aquitaine befriended [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] secretly made her way across the alps to italy her destination was the palace of the lombard king desiderius in pavia [Music] bertrada wanted to forge an alliance with the former enemy of the franks thereby securing charlemagne's kingdom [Music] an unusual dominance and held the strings of politics in her hands [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] this princess was to marry charlemagne thereby making the lombards allies and putting pressure on his brother's realm controlling him from the north south and west that was the plan the only problem was that the pope was distrustful of the allegiance between rome's arch enemy the lombards and its protector the franks pope stephen iii believed the hand of the devil was at work in bertrada's plan [Music] he wrote directly to the king of the franks [Music] foreign charlemagne divorced his wife himiltrud and banished her to a life in a convent as was customary for such cases at the time [Music] unfortunately we know very little about him we don't even know the family she came from but it's likely that this family wasn't very powerful because we know nothing about a protest against himutw's banishment which took place even though she had given charlemagne a son by the name of pepin the later pep in the hunchback and the sources also contain no information about what happened to himuut after her banishment [Music] this [Music] you [Music] is [Music] [Music] that marriage to the lombard princess seemed very useful the lombard king had married off his daughters to other prestigious people and uh charlemagne was sort of buying into an already existing uh constellation of power it was karmann's move [Music] uh [Music] is [Music] foreign [Music] before war could break out fate intervened [Music] [Music] at the young age of 20 karla man died under mysterious circumstances [Music] for charlemagne the death of his unloved brother opened up unforeseen opportunities [Music] people foreign [Music] [Music] charlemagne would soon declare himself sole ruler unexpected death was a gift for charlemagne i'm not entirely sure it was all above board but speculation is one facet of historical work the other is the certain statements of our witnesses and they don't permit any suggestion of any intervention by charlemagne with regard to his brother's death [Music] formulated a daring plan to prevent charlemagne from getting his hands on her sons as she fled across the alps her destination was of all places the court of the lombard king desiderius italy presumably because she hoped that protected by the lombards she would be able to get away from her ever more powerful brother-in-law she was seriously wrong it took charlemagne two years to march to italy but then all hope was lost for all of coloman's heirs the days at court were also numbered for charlemagne's lombard wife [Music] [Music] returned to the politics of his father and turned away from his mother's politics although we don't know what charlemagne's opinion about it actually was up until 771. he was able to act differently because things changed so fundamentally as a result of carloman's death [Music] [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Music] his relationships with italy were changing he wanted an alliance with the papacy and he wanted to break with the lombards but he also needed to marry a woman of the aristocracy which was much more normal than a foreign marriage he wanted uh to marry into a powerful family who would provide military and political support for him and so charlemagne married hildegard the daughter of a count from an aristocratic alemannic family he'd long since sent his lombard wife back to her father during the following 11 years of marriage hildegard gave birth to nine children [Music] realm which meant that her father was a great support for charlemagne with regard to carlin's territory in addition hildegard who was 14 at the time must have had a very special chance because she managed to reconcile the enemies of this marriage at court and to become a very popular queen as far as we can the lombard king desiderius humiliated by charlemagne went to rome to play his last trump card is [Music] it would have been a big challenge to charlemagne if the sons of his deceased brother had been given he claimed to be the sole ruler of the frankish empire that the pope might possibly give others a legitimation to the frankish throne was definitely a reason for him to intervene [Music] in may 772 war with the lombards seemed inevitable but charlemagne's behavior towards his brother's sons had angered many princes in the empire [Music] the situation was tense when charlemagne asked them to attend the military review as he did every year [Music] i got is [Music] [Music] when charlemagne sent his lombard wife back home he knew that it would mean war with the lombards he also knew that there would be resistance to a war with the lombards in his own ranks from his mother for example he had to get rid of that resistance so the franks could fight the lombards being the soldier king that he was he used the interim period for a campaign against the saxons because a king of that time always had to be at war that was his main job charlemagne's father pepin had also fought against the germanic saxons now the sun was taking over for years the saxons had been invading the north of the frankish empire but unlike his father charlemagne went a step further when he decided in 772 to advance with great brutality into saxon territory all the way to the upper vasa river [Music] so [Music] [Music] the fight against the saxons who in contrast to the franks weren't christians meaning they weren't baptized must have had a religious undercurrent right from the start religion was part of the political ethnic identity that had to be broken if necessary if such a people were to be subjected for example military submission and the assertion of christianity in saxony were inseparable for charlemagne they were two sides of the same coin for him who were these saxons and where did they live it is said the imposing x-stand stones in the egg hills were a cult site of the saxons who as germanic pagans worship their gods with animal sacrifices physicist clemens vorder is trying to find out whether these man-made caves really were used by the saxons in charlemagne's day [Music] is traces of a fire were found here years ago the question now is when was there fire here clemens voter is hoping to get an answer by using thermo-luminescence dating he's taking a sample to the laboratory there aren't many records about the saxons religious rituals but fire was considered sacred in all heathen cults as was the blood of the sacrificial animals with which the priests tried to placate the angry gods [Music] [Music] [Music] is dating the sample with the optically stimulated luminescence that allows him to determine when the quartz grains in the stone were heated for the last time it takes many days to prepare the sample and perform the measurements [Music] [Music] the results reveal that the fire in the caves of the ex-town stones must have burned between the 8th and the 16th centuries thus including the period of the saxon frankish wars [Music] whether they really were ritual fires can't be determined anymore since there are no further archaeological clues [Music] but there are further clues around the extern stones which suggest that this place had a special significance many believe that the legendary earminzal could have stood here during the time of charlemagne the earminzal was the most important object of saxon worship it is said to have been a massive tree that supported the heavens a christian relief was carved into the exterior wall of the main cave in the 16th century it depicts a deposition from the cross the relief contains a striking unusual detail it's a forked branch that resembles the descriptions of the urban zone [Music] does the relief contain a clue about whether the most sacred saxon religious object once stood here that would explain why charlemagne fought such a bitter war for this territory the person who had control of the sacred saxon site charlemagne hoped would also be in control of the saxons he had no idea that this fight would go on for decades [Music] you

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

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Keywords: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries, European history, European history biography, Middle Ages emperor, ancient empire, ancient history, bloodthirsty emperor, bloodthirsty ruler, historical biography, historical empire, historical events, historical figure, historical figure documentary, historical reign, kingdom of the Franks, medieval conquests, medieval emperor, medieval era, medieval leadership, medieval politics, medieval war

Id: SqCQzR4S9gg

Length: 50min 43sec (3043 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 03 2022