or Charles I, king of France, and emperor of the West by conquest, was born at the castle of Salzburg in Upper Bavaria in 742. The events in the life of this great monarch belong properly to the history of France. Equally illustrious in the cabinet and in the field, a wise legislator and a great warrior, the patron of men of letters and the restorer of learning, Charlemagne has united in his favour the suffrages of statesmen and soldiers, of ecclesiastics, lawyers, and men of letters, who have all vied with one another in bestowing the homage of their praise on the celebrated founder of the western empire. Politicians indeed have blamed him for having regulated everything in his states except the succession to the throne, which he left at the mercy of faction; and for having multiplied those assemblies where the royal power is necessarily weakened by being divided, a policy unsuitable to the extent and condition of his empire. Nor is this censure without foundation. By his genius, his courage, his activity, and the skill with which he distributed rewards, he unquestionably surmounted all obstacles; but he unfortunately consolidated nothing; and hence, to succeed him, we do not say with glory, but with safety to the throne and to France, it would have been necessary to resemble him in many of his great qualities. But such a successor was nowhere to be found. Charlemagne was the last hero of his race; and as he took no effectual measures to consolidate the empire which he had established, it went to pieces not long after that disastrous day when his nephew Roland, "with all his peerage, fell by Fontarabia." His death happened on the 28th January 814, in the seventy-second year of his age, and the forty-seventh of his reign; and he was buried in the cathedral of Aix-la-Chapelle. In the latter part of last century his tomb was opened, and his body, clothed in the imperial robes, was found seated on a throne of state. The whole crumbled into dust on being touched; but the diamond clasp that fastened his mantle is still preserved at Vienna.

The works of Charlemagne are, 1. His Capitularies, first collected by Ansegise, abbot of St Wandrille, the best edition of which is that of Etienne Baluze, Paris, 1677, 2 vols. folio; 2. Letters contained in the collection of D. Boquet; 3. A Grammar, of which fragments are to be found in the Polygraphes of Trithemius; 4. His Testament contained in Boquet's Bibliothèque du Droit François, tom. iii., printed at Paris, 1667, folio; 5. Some Latin poems, such as the Epitaph of Pope Adrian, and the Song of Roland; 6. The Caroline Books.

Of the more early historians of Charlemagne the principal is Eginhard. The details of his reign will be found under FRANCE and ITALY.