He died at the age of seventy years, in the year
of the Lord 814, in the seventh year of the Indiction, on the 5th of the
Kalends of February.'"
If we sum up his designs and his achievements, we find an admirably
sound idea and a vain dream, a great success and a great failure.
Charlemagne took in hand the work of placing upon a solid foundation the
Frankish Christian dominion by stopping, in the North and South, the
flood of barbarians and Arabs, paganism and Islamism. In that he
succeeded; the inundations of Asiatic populations spent their force in
vain against the Gallic frontier. Western and Christian Europe was
placed, territorially, beyond reach of attacks from the foreigner and
infidel. No sovereign, no human being, perhaps, ever rendered greater
service to the civilization of the world.
Charlemagne formed another conception and made another attempt. Like
more than one great barbaric warrior, he admired the Roman Empire that
had fallen, its vastness all in one, and its powerful organization under
the hand of a single master. He thought he could resuscitate it,
durably, through the victory of a new people and a new faith, by the
hand of Franks and Christians.
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