Louis I "The Pious" Emperor Of The Holy Roman Empire

Louis married Ermengarde (Irmengarde) Princess Of Hesbaye in 798 in , , , France. Ermengarde was born about 778 in Hesbaye, Liège, Wallonia, Belgium; died on 3 Oct 818 in Angers, Maine-et-Loire, Pays de la Loire, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Lothaire King of Italy, I was born in 795 in Altdorf, Landshut, Niederbayern, Bavaria, Germany; died on 29 Sep 855 in Pruem, Rheinland, Germany; was buried in St Sauveur, France.
2. Hildegarde Princess Of The Holy Roman Empire was born about 801 in , , , France; died after 841 in Laon, Aisne, Hauts-de-France, France.
3. King Pepin I, King Of Aquitaine was born about 803 in , , , France; died on 13 Dec 835.
4. Ludwig II King of The Germans was born about 806 in , , , France; died on 28 Aug 876 in Frankfurt, Hessen-Nassau, Germany; was buried in Lauresheim Abbey, Germany.
5. Alpaide (Alpais) Princess Of The Holy Roman Empire was born about 808 in , , , France.
6. Rotrude Princess Of The Holy Roman Empire was born about 810 in , , , France.

Louis married Judith Princess Of Bavaria in Feb 819 in Aachen, Rheinland, Germany. Judith was born in 804 in Altdorf, Landshut, Niederbayern, Bavaria, Germany; died on 19 Apr 843 in Tours, Indre Et Loire, Touraine, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

1. Gisela Princess Of The Holy Roman Empire was born about 820 in Frankfurt, Hessen-Nassau, Germany; died after 1 Jul 874.
2. Charles II "The Bald" Emperor Of The Holy Roman Empire was born on 13 Jun 823 in Frankfurt, Hessen-Nassau, Germany; died on 6 Oct 877 in Mont Cenis, Brides-les-Bains, Savoie, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France; was buried in Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis, France.

Notes:

Charlemagne, meaning Charles the Great (numbered Charles I of France and the Holy Roman Empire) (742/747 28 January 814) was King of the Franks from 768 to his death. He expanded the Frankish kingdoms into a Frankish Empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned Imperator Augustus by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800, in an attempted revival of the Roman Empire in the West. His rule is also associated with the Carolingian Renaissance, a revival of art, religion, and culture through the medium of the Catholic Church. Through his foreign conquests and internal reforms, Charlemagne helped define both Western Europe and the Middle Ages.

The son of King Pippin the Short and Bertrada of Laon, he succeeded his father and co-ruled with his brother Carloman I. The latter got on badly with Charlemagne, but war was prevented by the sudden death of Carloman in 771. Charlemagne continued the policy of his father towards the papacy and became its protector, removing the Lombards from power in Italy, and waging war on the Saracens, who menaced his realm from Spain. It was during one of these campaigns that Charlemagne experienced the worst defeat of his life, at Roncesvalles (778). He also campaigned against the peoples to his east, especially the Saxons, and after a protracted war subjected them to his rule. By forcibly converting them to Christianity, he integrated them into his realm and thus paved the way for the later Ottonian dynasty.




Early Life
Charlemagne was the eldest child of Pippin the Short (714 – 24 September 768, reigned from 751) and his wife Bertrada of Laon (720 – 12 July 783), daughter of Caribert of Laon andBertrada of Cologne. Records name only Carloman, Gisela, and a short-lived child named Pippin as his younger siblings. The semi-mythical Redburga, wife of King Egbert of Wessex, is sometimes claimed to be his sister (or sister-in-law or niece), and the legendary material makes him Roland's maternal uncle through a lady Bertha.

Much of what is known of Charlemagne's life comes from his biographer, Einhard, who wrote a Vita Caroli Magni (or Vita Karoli Magni), the Life of Charlemagne. Einhard says of the early life of Charles:

It would be folly, I think, to write a word concerning Charles' birth and infancy, or even his boyhood, for nothing has ever been written on the subject, and there is no one alive now who can give information on it. Accordingly, I determined to pass that by as unknown, and to proceed at once to treat of his character, his deed, and such other facts of his life as are worth telling and setting forth, and shall first give an account of his deed at home and abroad, then of his character and pursuits, and lastly of his administration and death, omitting nothing worth knowing or necessary to know.

On the death of Pippin, the kingdom of the Franks was divided—following tradition—between Charlemagne and Carloman. Charles took the outer parts of the kingdom, bordering on the sea, namely Neustria, western Aquitaine, and the northern parts of Austrasia, while Carloman retained the inner parts: southern Austrasia, Septimania, eastern Aquitaine, Burgundy,Provence, and Swabia, lands bordering on Italy.

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On 9 October, immediately after the funeral of their father, both the kings withdrew from Saint Denis to be proclaimed by their nobles and consecrated by the bishops, Charlemagne inNoyon and Carloman in Soissons.

The first event of the brothers' reign was the rising of the Aquitainians and Gascons, in 769, in that territory split between the two kings. Years before Pippin had suppressed the revolt ofWaifer, Duke of Aquitaine. Now, one Hunald (seemingly other than Hunald the duke) led the Aquitainians as far north as Angoulême. Charlemagne met Carloman, but Carloman refused to participate and returned to Burgundy. Charlemagne went to war, leading an army to Bordeaux, where he set up a camp at Fronsac. Hunold was forced to flee to the court of Duke Lupus II of Gascony. Lupus, fearing Charlemagne, turned Hunold over in exchange for peace. He was put in a monastery. Aquitaine was finally fully subdued by the Franks.

The brothers maintained lukewarm relations with the assistance of their mother Bertrada, but in 770 Charlemagne signed a treaty with Duke Tassilo III of Bavaria and married a Lombard Princess (commonly known today as Desiderata), the daughter of King Desiderius, in order to surround Carloman with his own allies. Though Pope Stephen III first opposed the marriage with the Lombard princess, he would soon have little to fear from a Frankish-Lombard alliance.

Less than a year after his marriage, Charlemagne repudiated Desiderata, and quickly remarried to a 13-year-old Swabian named Hildegard. The repudiated Desiderata returned to her father's court at Pavia. The Lombard's wrath was now aroused and he would gladly have allied with Carloman to defeat Charles. But before war could break out, Carloman died on 5 December 771. Carloman's wife Gerberga fled to Desiderius' court with her sons for protection.


Children
During the first peace of any substantial length (780–782), Charles began to appoint his sons to positions of authority within the realm, in the tradition of the kings and mayors of the past. In 781 he made his two younger sons kings, having them crowned by the Pope. The elder of these two, Carloman, was made king of Italy, taking the Iron Crown which his father had first worn in 774, and in the same ceremony was renamed "Pippin." The younger of the two, Louis, became king of Aquitaine. Charlemagne ordered Pippin and Louis to be raised in the customs of their kingdoms, and he gave their regents some control of their subkingdoms, but real power was always in his hands, though he intended each to inherit their realm some day. Nor did he tolerate insubordination in his sons: in 792, he banished his eldest, though illegitimate, son, Pippin the Hunchback, to the monastery of Prüm, because the young man had joined a rebellion against him.

The sons fought many wars on behalf of their father when they came of age. Charles was mostly preoccupied with the Bretons, whose border he shared and who insurrected on at least two occasions and were easily put down, but he was also sent against the Saxons on multiple occasions. In 805 and 806, he was sent into the Böhmerwald (modern Bohemia) to deal with the Slavs living there (Czechs). He subjected them to Frankish authority and devastated the valley of the Elbe, forcing a tribute on them. Pippin had to hold the Avar and Beneventan borders, but also fought the Slavs to his north. He was uniquely poised to fight the Byzantine Empire when finally that conflict arose after Charlemagne's imperial coronation and a Venetianrebellion. Finally, Louis was in charge of the Spanish March and also went to southern Italy to fight the duke of Benevento on at least one occasion. He took Barcelona in a great siege in the year 797 (see below).

Charlemagne's attitude toward his daughters has been the subject of much discussion. He kept them at home with him, and refused to allow them to contract sacramental marriages – possibly to prevent the creation of cadet branches of the family to challenge the main line, as had been the case with Tassilo of Bavaria – yet he tolerated their extramarital relationships, even rewarding their common-law husbands, and treasured the bastard grandchildren they produced for him. He also, apparently, refused to believe stories of their wild behaviour. After his death the surviving daughters were banished from the court by their brother, the pious Louis, to take up residence in the convents they had been bequeathed by their father. At least one of them, Bertha, had a recognised relationship, if not a marriage, with Angilbert, a member of Charlemagne's court circle.


Death
In 813, Charlemagne called Louis the Pious, king of Aquitaine, his only surviving legitimate son, to his court. There he crowned him with his own hands as co-emperor and sent him back to Aquitaine. He then spent the autumn hunting before returning to Aachen on 1 November. In January, he fell ill with pleurisy. He took to his bed on 21 January and as Einhard tells it:

He died January twenty-eighth, the seventh day from the time that he took to his bed, at nine o'clock in the morning, after partaking of the Holy Communion, in the seventy-second year of his age and the forty-seventh of his reign.

Frederick II's gold and silver casket for Charlemagne
He was buried on the day of his death, in Aachen Cathedral, although the cold weather and the nature of his illness made such a hurried burial unnecessary. The earliest surviving planctus, the Planctus de obitu Karoli, was composed by a monk of Bobbio, which he had patronised. A later story, told by Otho of Lomello, Count of the Palace at Aachen in the time of Otto III, would claim that he and Emperor Otto had discovered Charlemagne's tomb: the emperor, they claimed, was seated upon a throne, wearing a crown and holding a sceptre, his flesh almost entirely incorrupt. In 1165, Frederick I re-opened the tomb again, and placed the emperor in a sarcophagus beneath the floor of the cathedral. In 1215 Frederick II would re-inter him in a casket made of gold and silver.

Charlemagne's death greatly affected many of his subjects, particularly those of the literary clique who had surrounded him at Aachen. An anonymous monk of Bobbio lamented:

“From the lands where the sun rises to western shores, People are crying and wailing...the Franks, the Romans, all Christians, are stung with mourning and great worry...the young and old, glorious nobles, all lament the loss of their Caesar...the world laments the death of Charles...O Christ, you who govern the heavenly host, grant a peaceful place to Charles in your kingdom. Alas for miserable me.”
He was succeeded by his surviving son, Louis, who had been crowned the previous year. His empire lasted only another generation in its entirety; its division, according to custom, between Louis's own sons after their father's death laid the foundation for the modern states of France and Germany.

Charles married Hildegard Empress Of The Holy Roman Empire about 772 in Aachen, Rheinland, Germany. Hildegard (daughter of Gerold of Vinzgau and Emma) was born about 757 in Aachen, Rheinland, Germany; died on 30 Apr 783 in Thionville, Moselle, Lorraine, France; was buried in Abbaye de Saint-Arnould, Metz, Moselle, Lorraine, France. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Notes:

Gerold of Vinzgau (also Vintzgouw or Anglachgau; 725 - 799) was a count in Kraichgau and Anglachgau. His daughter married King Charlemagne in 771. In 784 generous donations to the monastery of Lorsch by Gerold and Emma are recorded.

He was married before 754 to Emma (d. 789 or 798 or after 784), daughter of Hnabi, Duke of Alamannia. They had the following:
Gerold[2]
Udalrich
Hildegard, born in 754, married King Charlemagne in 771.[2]
probably Adrian, Count of Orléans, father of Odo I, Count of Orléans
Eric of Friuli.
Through Udalrich, Gerold is reckoned as the founder of the family of the Udalrichings.

Gerold married Emma in 754. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]