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Charlemagne   /ʃˈɑrləmˌeɪn/   Listen
Charlemagne

noun
1.
King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor; conqueror of the Lombards and Saxons (742-814).  Synonyms: Carolus, Charles, Charles I, Charles the Great.






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"Charlemagne" Quotes from Famous Books



... convent on the summit of Prinkipo, where the Empress Irene—the contemporary of Charlemagne—is buried. The town is on the northern side of the island, and consists mostly of the summer residences of Greek and Armenian merchants. Many of these are large and stately houses, surrounded with handsome gardens. The streets are shaded with sycamores, and the number of ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... Petronius, is of great excellence, and where the verse, if a little declamatory, is of a very high order of declamation. The strange piece, first published by Mr. Bullen, and called by him The Distracted Emperor, a tragedy based partly on the legend of Charlemagne and Fastrada, again gives us a specimen of horror-mongering. The Return from Parnassus (see note, p. 81), famous for its personal touches and its contribution to Shakespere literature, is interesting first ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... to woman the same scenes, immerse her in the same great interests and pursuits, and if twenty centuries shall not produce a woman Charlemagne, or a Napoleon, fair reason will then allow us to conclude that there is some distinctive peculiarity in ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... the head, between Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin. All the saints are there, and the Poilu notices particularly the military ones—St. George, St. Hubert, St. Michael, St. Leonard, St. Marcel, St. Charlemagne, St. Martin, St. Sulpice, St. Barbe, St. Maurice, and St. Jeanne d'Arc. Seeing all these famous soldiers, he exclaims, "It's a Conseil de Guerre! Perhaps I can slip away." But escape is impossible, and at this moment the Good God tells him to ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas

... mine as it may, gentlemen, at all events Steelkilt was a tall and noble animal with a head like a Roman, and a flowing golden beard like the tasseled housings of your last viceroy's snorting charger; and a brain, and a heart, and a soul in him, gentlemen, which had made Steelkilt Charlemagne, had he been born son to Charlemagne's father. But Radney, the mate, was ugly as a mule; yet as hardy, as stubborn, as malicious. He did not love Steelkilt, and Steelkilt knew it. Espying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the rest, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... was occupied by seven distinct nations, who had no common chief. The Franks, one of the number, having conquered the Gauls, established the kingdom which has taken its name from them. In the ninth century Charlemagne, its warlike monarch, carried his victorious arms in every direction; and Germany became a part of his vast dominions. On the dismemberment, which took place under his sons, this part was erected into a separate and independent empire. Charlemagne and his ...
— The Federalist Papers

... the ancient regime could imagine or divine, even to the reconstruction of the empire of the west as this existed in the year 800. "I am not Louis XIV.'s successor," he soon declares,[5134] "but of Charlemagne.... I am Charlemagne, because, like Charlemagne, I unite the French crown to that of the Lombards, and my empire borders on the Orient." In this conception, which a remote history furnishes to his boundless ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... doubting between the cities of Lombardy leagued against Frederick, and Frederick, who is coming to Rome, not so much to befriend the papacy as to place himself in a better attitude to crush the Lombards. The German dreams of the restoration of Charlemagne's empire; he believes the Church corrupt; and he and Arnaldo would be friends, if it were not for Arnaldo's vain hope of reestablishing the republican liberties of Rome. The Pope utters his ardent desire to bring Arnaldo back ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... Gale's Historiae Britannicae, etc. Scriptores, vol. iii. p. 703, seq. The famous author of this poem, Alcuin, who was brought up at York, and probably born there about the year 735, became afterwards, as is well known, the councillor and confidant of Charlemagne. The application to the Bass of the lines in which he describes the anchoret residence of ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson

... by stone, through the learning of M. Viollet le Duc and the public spirit of the late Emperor. Pass in under the gateway and give yourself up to legends. There grins down on you the broad image of the mythic Dame Carcas, who defended the town single-handed against Charlemagne, till this tower fell down by miracle, and let in the Christian host. But do not believe that she gave to the place its name of Carcassone; for the first syllable of the word is hint enough that it was, long ere her days, a Celtic caer, or hill-fortress. Pause at the inner gate; ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... long before the invention of printing, though Alexander would have had difficulty in recognising his identity under the strange mediaeval motley in which his namesake wandered over the land. No single man, with the possible exception of Charlemagne, was so much written about or played so brilliantly the part of a hero to the Middle Ages and after.[18] The simplicity and universality of his success were of a type to appeal to the boy Charles, himself built on simple lines. The fact, too, that Alexander was the son ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam

... the first blow at Hastings was a minstrel who, as he rode against the English, sang. And the song he sang was of Roland, the great champion of Charlemagne. The Roland story is to France what the Arthur story is to us. And it shows, perhaps, the strength of English patriotic spirit that that story never took hold of English minds. Some few tales there are told of Roland in English, but they are few indeed, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... as we wished to visit it in the daylight that morning, we arranged that the guide should meet us on a bridge outside the town, which we must cross on our way to and from what we were told was once a royal castle, where King Achius signed a treaty with Charlemagne. The castle was some distance from the town, and quite near the famous distillery where the whisky known as "Long John" or the "Dew of Ben Nevis" was produced. We found ready access to the ruins, as the key had been left in the gate of the walled fence which surrounded them. "Prince Charlie," ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... strange," she said, musing, "that maiden hath the bearing of head and neck that I have never seen save in my own mother, the saints rest her soul, and in her sisters, and which we always held to be their inheritance from the blood of Charlemagne." ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... in the Autobiography— in the stories of Maurice Baring plunging into the sea in evening dress on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, and of the smashing by Gilbert of a wine-glass that became in retrospect a priceless goblet (which had "stood by Charlemagne's great chair and served St. Peter at High Mass") and now ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... Travels of Anacharsis; Mitford's Greece; Ferguson's History of the Roman Republic; Baker's Livy; Middleton's Life of Cicero; Murphy's Tacitus; Sismondi's Decline of the Roman Empire; Muller's Universal History; Hallam's History of the Middle Ages; James' Life of Charlemagne; Mills' History of the Crusades and of Chivalry; Turner's History of England; Burnett's History of his own Times; Robertson's History of Scotland; Robertson's Charles V.; Vertot's Revolutions of Sweden; Vertot's ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb

... old.) Dorry's words had fired his courage anew. As he looked out upon the starry night, over the roof-peaks of the quaint old city, he felt like a Crusader, and Dorothy's happiness was his Holy-land, to be rescued from all invaders. The spirit of grand old Charlemagne, whose bones were in the Cathedral close by, was not more resolute than Donald's ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge

... varieties of writing found in the MSS. produced before the great revival of the arts and learning which took place during the reign of Charles the Great (Karl der Grosse), known familiarly as Charlemagne. ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley

... religious zeal in France, and to the people from whom came the pioneers who suffered or were slain for her, she had the glamour of new-born empire, of a conquest renewing the glories of the days of Charlemagne. Visions of a hemisphere controlled from Versailles haunted the days of Francis the First, of the Grand Monarch, of Colbert and of Richelieu, and in the sky of national hope and over all was the Cross whose passion led the Church into the wilderness. The ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... not to the Bible we must go for all the authority we can produce for denying that marriage is simply a civil contract. The form, binding one man to one woman, had its origin outside of the Bible. Up to the time of Charlemagne in the eighth century, polygamy and concubinage were common among Christians and countenanced by the Church. Even Luther seems to have had somewhat lax, though not unscriptural, notions on the subject. When Philip, landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, wanted to ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... and sung these self-same stars. They shone upon the slow succession of civilizations that have disappeared, from Egypt of the period of the Pyramids, Greece at the time of the Trojan War, Rome and Carthage, Constantine and Charlemagne, down to the Twentieth Century. The generations are buried with the dust of their ancient temples. The Stars are still ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion

... temple, and the people having treated them as noblemen even at that time. We will remind the Christian ladies of this whenever they talk to us about their own ancestors, who, at best, only date back to the middle ages or to Charlemagne." "That is right. I like to hear you talk in this strain," exclaimed Marianne, joyfully. "I see you will represent us in Vienna in a noble and proud manner, and be an honor to the Jews of Berlin. ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... Bridge William Tell Catherine Douglas Casabianca Handel, the Great Musician The Story of Columbus Antonio Canova Damon and Pythias Charlemagne and the Charcoal-burner ...
— Golden Deeds - Stories from History • Anonymous

... how common they must have been in medieval Europe, till I saw in the forest of Fontainebleau a few oaks, like the oak of Charlemagne and the Bouquet du Roi, at whose age I dare not guess, but whose size and shape showed them to have once formed part of a continuous wood, the like whereof remains not in these isles—perhaps not east of the Carpathian mountains. In them a clear shaft of at least sixty, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... of relief from long and wearisome watching was at hand. As his strength wasted away, delirium stirred up the brain from its long and inglorious inactivity. The pageant of ambition returned. He was again a Lieutenant, a General, a Consul, an Emperor of France. He filled again the throne of Charlemagne. His kindred pressed around him again, re-invested with the pompous pageantry of royalty. The daughter of the long line of kings again stood proudly by his side, and the sunny face of his child shone ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... short notices of this saint, who is said to have been an illustrious and saintly bishop during the reign of King Achaius, a Scottish king contemporaneous with Charlemagne. Very few particulars can be ascertained as to his life. All that is at present known of him is gathered from the traces of his cultus which remain in various districts of the country. Thus the parish of Kinglassie, ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett

... principles of morality. So it is a common thing in the early English reports to find frequent references to the Mosaic law. Sismondi also states that one of the first acts of the clergy under Pepin and Charlemagne, of France, was to introduce into the legislation of the Franks several of the Mosaic laws found in the books of Deuteronomy and Leviticus. It is truthfully said that the entire code of civil and judicial statutes throughout ...
— The Christian Foundation, March, 1880

... 35. A psalm full of associations of battles long ago: sung against Julian the Apostate, used by Charlemagne, Anthony, Dunstan, and ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... mythology, and that we must be prepared to find grains of local history on which, as I said,(45) the sharpest tools of Comparative Mythology must bend or break. Again and again have we shown that historical persons(46)—not only Cyrus and Charlemagne, but Frederick Barbarossa and even Frederick the Great—have been drawn into the vortex of popular mythology. Yet these are the words of Professor Blackie: "The cool way in which Max Mueller and his English ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller

... And since the said Incarnation have been three noble Christian men, installed and admitted through the universal world into the number of the nine best and worthy, of whom was first the noble Arthur, whose noble acts I purpose to write in this present book here following. The second was Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, of whom the history is had in many places both in French and English; and the third and last was Godfrey of Boulogne, of whose acts and life I made a book unto the excellent prince and king of noble memory, King Edward the Fourth. The said noble gentlemen instantly required ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various

... of burial guilds, fraternal pastors of the Christian community? Was it Pope Damasus, the first great builder, the man of letters who took delight in intellectual matters, the ardent believer who is said to have opened the Catacombs to the piety of the faithful? Was it Leo III, who by crowning Charlemagne boldly consummated the rupture with the schismatic East and conveyed the Empire to the West by the all-powerful will of God and His Church, which thenceforth disposed of the crowns of monarchs? Was it the terrible Gregory VII, the purifier ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... Strange as such a conception seems to our ideas, it was not unfamiliar to the jurists of that day. It was in this fashion that the Capetian house claimed its boasted descent and continuity from the race of Charlemagne. Such a principle was actually the law in some parts of France, and it was a matter of every-day occurrence in the Parisis to transmit male fiefs to the sons of heiresses, themselves incapable of succession. ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... not remember, sir," he asked, "the great ruby that glared, blood-red from its center, and the four sets of golden wings that formed the setting? From the blood of Charlemagne was the ruby made, so history tells us, and the setting represented the protecting wings of the power of the kings of Lutha spread to the four points of the compass. Now your majesty must recall the royal ring, ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... odious. In intellect he must probably be called great, though his policy often betrayed the pettiness of selfishness. If, in comparison with the mediaeval emperor whose fame he envied, he may justly be called Charles the Little, he may still, when compared to a more modern emulator of Charlemagne,—the first of the Bonapartes,—be considered great and enlightened. If he could lie and cheat more consummately than any contemporary monarch, not excepting his rival, Francis, he could still be grandly magnanimous, while the generosity ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... leading a string of remounts, each remount with a laughing child on its back. Or, again, you can wash. If you are not fortunate enough to be billeted at Bailleul, which has the latest thing in baths, enabling men to be baptized, like Charlemagne's reluctant converts, in platoons, you can always find a pump. The spectacle of our men stripped to the waist sousing each other with water under the pump is a source of standing wonder to the inhabitants. I am not sure whether they ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... Scotland for an ancestor. I have misgivings, however, as to the quality of the royal blood in my veins, for the same correspondent was equally confident six months ago that my people came in direct line from Charlemagne. As I have no desire to “corner” the market in kings, these ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... men first began to fight for the possession of the land. The lake-dwellers are imagined to have had some sort of stronghold there; and it is reasonably supposed that Romans, Franks, and Burgundians had each fortified the rock. Count Wala, cousin of Charlemagne, and grandson of Charles Martel, was a prisoner in its dungeon in 830 for uttering some words too true for an age unaccustomed to the perpetual veracity of our newspapers. Count Wala, who was also an abbot, had the misfortune to speak of Judith ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells

... again and again from her native earth with redoubled energy. At last, in the sixteenth century, a new and more powerful spirit, the genius of religious freedom, came to participate in the great conflict. Arbitrary power, incarnated in the second Charlemagne, assailed the new combination with unscrupulous, unforgiving fierceness. In the little Netherland territory, humanity, bleeding but not killed, still stood at bay, and defied the hunters. The two ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... the people literally were more superstitious and credulous than in the days of paganism. It is enough to say, that they were of very easy belief; and hence men began to write their histories in the style of romance, mixing up a thousand fables with the deeds of great men, such as Roland, nephew to Charlemagne; which so suited the taste of the age, that no book would afterwards go down in any other style—witness, for instance, the Manual of Devotions by James de Voragine, archbishop of Genoa, composed towards ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

... allude to the introduction of romantic fiction into English poetry. This had, as we have seen, reigned in France. There troubadours in Provence, and men more worthy of the name of poets in Normandy, had long sung of Brutus, of Charlemagne, and of Rollo. And thence a class, called sometimes Joculators, sometimes Jongleurs, and sometimes Minstrels, issued, harp in hand, wandering to and fro, and singing tales of chivalry and love, composed either ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... not at all your death that I desire, but my niece's establishment in life. At the same time, it must come to that if you prove obstinate. Your family, Monsieur de Beaulieu, is very well in its way; but if you sprang from Charlemagne, you should not refuse the hand of a Maletroit with impunity—not if she had been as common as the Paris road—not if she were as hideous as the gargoyle over my door. Neither my niece nor you, nor my own private feelings, move me at all in this matter. The honour of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... "Confrere:" one is upon the subject of M. Crapelet's version—the other, upon that of M. Licquet's version—of a portion of the Tour. The notice of the Works of the Author of the Tour; a list of the prices for which the Books mentioned in it have been sold; a Notice of the "Hours of Charlemagne" (see vol. ii. 199) and some account of the late Mr. Porson "Librarian of the London Institution"—form the remaining portion of this little volume of about 160 pages. For the "Curiosites Bibliographiques," consult the Bibliomania, pp. 90, ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... Of course there is not a word of this. All that we are entitled to say is that Dante held Henry to be an Emperor who was doing his duty, and would earn his reward like any other Christian and before Dante himself. It will be observed that he sees no other Emperor in Paradise, save Charlemagne; one, Rudolf of Hapsburg, is in, or rather just outside of, Purgatory; one, the great Frederick II., in Hell. Of the Popes one only, and he a Pope who in his life lay under grievous suspicion of heterodoxy, and moreover only occupied the Papal See for ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler

... to doubt it," returned Dumas. "You remember Charles V. at Yuste. You do not belong to the class of emperors who abdicate or kings who are dethroned, but to those princes who die under a canopy, and who are buried, like Charlemagne, their feet in their bucklers, swords at their sides, crowns on their heads and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... savant, arrived for luncheon to-day. He is a personality! I will describe him later. I will only say now he is most learned and very absent-minded. After luncheon the Queen wanted us to see the old cathedral of Monza, where, as you know, the famous iron crown of Charlemagne is kept. So after lunch the landau was ordered for us. Marquise Trotti (dame d'honneur) accompanied us. The Queen asked Signor Bonghi to go with us to explain things. Quite a crowd collected about the church door to stare ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... bride, managed to console himself for her loss by appropriating her treasures, while the Langobardian scepter, after having been wielded by different kings, fell at last into the hands of Rother, the last influential monarch of a kingdom which Charlemagne ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... crowned head in Europe," he said. The great scientist was relating anecdote after anecdote of the people he had known—Charlemagne, Machiavelli, Newman, Dickens, the Shakspeares, father and son. There followed a racy story, inimitably told, of Miss Mitford in her less ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various

... always to be remembered that although the statutes were severe enough, yet during this period, as indeed throughout all history, they were defied with impunity. Charlemagne, for example, the most Christian monarch, had a large number of concubines and divorced a wife who did not please him; yet his biographer Einhard, pious monk as he was, has no word of censure for his monarch's irregularities[326]; ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... of the Vicomte de Bourdeille, a Perigord nobleman, whose family had lived long in Guienne, and whose aristocratic lineage was lost in myth. Upon the estate stood the Abbey of Brantome, founded by Charlemagne, and this Henry II. gave to young Pierre de Bourdeille in recognition of the military deeds of his brother, Jean de Bourdeille, who lost his life in service. Thereafter the lad was to sign his name as the Reverend Father in God, Messire Pierre de Bourdeille, Abbe de Brantome. Born in the old ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... era, strange rites were still performed in honor of dolmens and menhirs. The councils of the Church condemned them, and the emperors and kings supported by their authority the decrees of the ecclesiastics.[24] Childebert in 554, Carloman in 742, Charlemagne by an edict issued at Aix-la-Chapelle in 789,[25] forbid their subjects to practise these rites borrowed from heathenism. But popes and emperors are alike powerless in this direction, and one generation transmits its traditions and superstitions to another. In the seventeenth ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... monk, enhanced its prestige, and converted the Anglo-Saxons to the Roman Christian faith by Benedictine monks. Gradually the rule found so general acceptance both in old and in new institutions, that, in the time of Charlemagne, it became a question, whether there were any monks at all who were not Benedictines. The order, it is true, has degenerated from time to time, through the increase of its wealth and the decay of its discipline, but its fostering care ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various

... Christian days there must have been a cult of the menhir, for the councils of Arles (A.D. 452), of Tours (A.D. 567), and of Nantes (A.D. 658) all condemn the cult of trees, springs, and stones. In A.D. 789 Charlemagne attempted to suppress stone-worship, and to destroy the stones themselves. In Spain, where, as in France, megalithic monuments are common, the councils of Toledo in A.D. 681 and 682 condemned the "Worshippers ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet

... seemed to defy all description. They sung in parts, their voices accompanied by a few soft instruments. At a little distance from the portico they stopped, and Emily distinguished the verses of Ariosto. They sung of the wars of the Moors against Charlemagne, and then of the woes of Orlando: afterwards the measure changed, and the melancholy sweetness of Petrarch succeeded. The magic of his grief was assisted by all that Italian music and Italian expression, heightened by ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... picture of Browning's attitude towards his own emotions and his psychological type. If a man had asked him what some particular allusion to a Persian hero meant he could in all probability have quoted half the epic; if a man had asked him which third cousin of Charlemagne was alluded to in Sordello, he could have given an account of the man and an account of his father and his grandfather. But if a man had asked him what he thought of himself, or what were his emotions an hour before ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... as these are rare enough in Europe now. I never understood how possible, how common, they must have been in medieval Europe, till I saw in the forest of Fontainebleau a few oaks like the oak of Charlemagne, and the Bouquet du Roi, at whose age I dare not guess, but whose size and shape showed them to have once formed part of a continuous wood, the like whereof remains not in these isles—perhaps not east of the Carpathian Mountains. In them a clear shaft of at least sixty, it ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... read, wherein the young squire has to flee his country for a chance blow, as did Messire Patroclus, in the Romance of Troy, who slew a man in anger over the game of the chess, and many another knight, in the tales of Charlemagne and his paladins. For ever it is thus the story opens, and my story, methought, was beginning ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang

... assuming that I not only wrote but invented the stories, as I did not, I say that I should take no shame to myself that they were not all proper; seeing that artist there is none to be found, save God, that does all things well and perfectly. And Charlemagne, albeit he created the Paladins, wist not how to make them in such numbers as to form an army of them alone. It must needs be that in the multitude of things there be found diversities of quality. No field was ever so well tilled but that here and there nettle, or ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio

... could have easily laid down their arms and surrendered, thus saving their lives; but this would have endangered Lee's army, so they fought and died like men. The roar of their howitzers and the rattle of their musketry were like the blasts of the horn of Roland when calling Charlemagne to his aid along the mountain pass of Roncesvalles, but, unlike the latter, we could not answer our comrades' call, and had only to leave them alone to "die in their glory." The brave Pettigrew fell while heading his troops in a charge to beat back some of the furious onslaughts ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... Bishop of Oxford, after hearing a sermon by Dr. Howson, Dean of Chester, wrote thus in his diary: "One good bit—that the emptying Christianity of dogma would perish it, like Charlemagne's face when exhumed." It was a striking simile, and if well worked out by a rhetorician, say of Dr. Liddon's type, it might have powerfully clinched some great argument for the necessary place of dogma in Christian theology. But the sermon has vanished, and we can only conjecture ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell

... violent fanaticism of the East, but sanctioned the veneration of images and pictures to an extent which we find it hard to justify, and which was, in fact, deemed unjustifiable by many in the West, who yet wished for their retention as decorations and aids to devotional feeling. Charlemagne, under the influence of our English Alcuin, opposed the decision of the Council, and held provincial synods (especially one at Frankfort, A.D. 794) {97} to condemn what was, at any ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt

... changed to an expression of imperial dignity as he encased himself in Catherine the Great's ermine Robe of State and grasped the Mace of Alexander in his good left hand. But then the royal mien gave way to a sullen scowl as he hesitated between Charlemagne's Crown and ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro

... which we find set out in the name of Tisisthenes, they appear to have pretty regularly assumed the cognomen of Vindex, or Avenger. Here, too, they remained for another five centuries or more, till about 770 A.D., when Charlemagne invaded Lombardy, where they were then settled, whereon the head of the family seems to have attached himself to the great Emperor, and to have returned with him across the Alps, and finally to have settled in Brittany. ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... Lombards; the conquest of the Asiatic and African provinces by the Arabs, who embraced the religion of Mahomet; the revolt of the Roman people against the feeble princes of Constantinople; and the elevation of Charlemagne, who, in the year eight hundred, established the second, or German Empire ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... at Roche-Mauprat, except, I should say, the History of the Sons of Aymon, and a few chronicles of the same class brought by our servants from country fairs. Three names, and only three, stood clear in the chaos of my ignorance—Charlemagne, Louis XI, and Louis XIV; because my grandfather would frequently introduce these into dissertations on the unrecognised rights of the nobles. In truth, I was so ignorant that I scarcely knew the ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... this scheme in the halls of Congress, in their pulpits, and at their public gatherings. Going back into sacred and profane history, they would attempt to prove that Moses, Joshua, Saul, and David were "filibusters," and so were William the Conqueror, Charlemagne, Gustavus Adolphus, and Napoleon. Walker simply followed their example, except that they wore crowns on their heads, while he, a new man, only carried a sword in his hand. Was it right, they asked, when a brave American adventurer, ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... nature abound, as, for instance, when he spoke of Lord Melbourne as "sauntering over the destinies of a nation, and lounging away the glories of an Empire," or when he likened those Tories who followed Sir Robert Peel to the Saxons converted by Charlemagne. "The old chronicler informs us they were converted in battalions and ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... fable into his Polyhistor; and DICUIL, the Irish commentator of the ninth century, who had an opportunity of seeing the elephant sent by Haroun Alraschid as a present to Charlemagne[1] in the year 802, corrects the error, and attributes its perpetuation to the circumstance that the joints in the elephant's leg are not very apparent, except when he ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... with it, but few perhaps know of its princely origin. It is princely, not because princes' hands once kept the key to Johannisberg, but rather because princely hands planted the vine in the Rhine country, and this royal giver was no other than Charlemagne, the all-powerful ruler of the ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland

... history. The vast court of the palace is lined with colossal statues; and thus we enter the vestibule through a file of pale and majestic sentinels, summoned, as it were, from the tomb to guard the trophies of nationality. Our pilgrimage through such a world of effigies begins with Clovis and Charlemagne, and ends with Louis Philippe: the place itself is the ancient home of royalty; the gardens, visible from every window, have been trod by generations of monarchs and courtiers; the ceilings bear the arms of the noble families ...
— Gifts of Genius - A Miscellany of Prose and Poetry by American Authors • Various

... wall that was old when Columbus discovered America; old when Peter the Hermit roused the knightly men of the Middle Ages to arm for the first Crusade; old when Charlemagne and his paladins beleaguered enchanted castles and battled with giants and genii in the fabled days of the olden time; old when Christ and his disciples walked the earth; stood where it stands to-day when the lips of Memnon were vocal and men bought ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... "Charlemagne's Ride!" he whispered as we came up. We looked down from the top of the bank and saw below us a broad forest glade, canopied by the thick branches of the ancient trees that met overhead, and leading up a slope, narrowing as it went, to a path that lost itself among ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams

... from Charlemagne the name is legion; but even such elongated pedigrees are quite contemptible in their brevity compared with others which have at their head no other progenitor than Adam, the father of us all. At Mostyn Hall, we learn, there is a vellum ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... of being asked questions. One day she went to Charles and said, "Gentle Dauphin, why do you delay to believe me? I tell you that God has taken pity on you and your people, at the prayer of St. Louis and St. Charlemagne. And I will tell you by your leave, something which will show you that you should believe me." Then she told him secretly something which, as he said, none could know but ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... another excellently spoken-of saint, slept at Athens for fifty-seven years. Thus Charlemagne slept in the Untersberg, and will sleep until the ravens of Miramon Lluagor have left his mountains. Thus Rhyming Thomas in the Eildon Hills, thus Ogier ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... the glories of the reign of Charlemagne had gone down in a sunset of splendor, the Northmen entered unopposed all the great rivers of France and Spain. They speedily conquered England. On all sides they ravaged the country and destroyed the population, whose only defence ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... proceeded slowly. During the Carolingian epoch (800-919), however, afew important buildings were erected, embodying Byzantine and classic traditions. Among these the most notable was the Minster or palatine chapel of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, an obvious imitation of San Vitale at Ravenna. It consisted of an octagonal domed hall surrounded by a vaulted aisle in two stories, but without the eight niches of the Ravenna plan. It was preceded by a porch flanked by turrets. The Byzantine ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... wish to know more than others, say that the turkey was known to the ancients, and was served up at the wedding feast of Charlemagne. They say it is an error to attribute the importation to the Jesuits. To these paradoxes but two ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin

... soul is incomparably better than all that can be obtained from pomp and luxury. Charlemagne is said to have worn in his crown a nail taken from the cross on which the Savior was crucified. He wore it among the jewels of his diadem as a reminder that there existed a tenderer relation in life than kingdoms and material splendor. Thus in the crown of our success, ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given

... prose dress from the printing-press of Caxton's successor, Wynkyn de Worde. The Dutch printer had also published Lord Berners' translation of Huon of Bordeaux, the best romance of chivalry belonging to the Charlemagne cycle. But, before the dawn of the 16th century Malory had already given us Morte D'Arthur, from the Arthurian cycle, printed, as everyone knows, by the industrious Caxton himself. Thus, if we neglect, as I think we may, translations from the Gesta Romanorum, we may say ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson

... horsewoman, and a fearless descendant of those woman warriors of her race, Margaret the Empress, and Philippa the Queen, and of a house that traced its descent through the warlike Hohenstaufens back to Charlemagne himself. ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... during childhood, a class which slipped the labour as soon as years gave liberty of choice. There are others who have always turned as naturally to its accounts of grand ceremony and terrible battles as to the accounts of Caesar, Coeur de Lion, Charlemagne. But in either case, whatever the reason for the eye to absorb these pages of ancient Hebrew history, the impression is gained of superb pomp. And always concerned with it are descriptions of details, lovingly impressed, as though the chronicler was sure ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... appeared upon the stage, the great monarchies of Europe had just arisen upon the ruins of those Feudal states which survived the wreck of Charlemagne's empire. ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... Maud, daughter of Henry I. Consequently, this family has flourished, as dukes, marquesses, and earls, without descending to a lower degree, for full 700 years. The Duke of Montague traces his descent, by the female line, from Charlemagne. The Earl of Shrewsbury's family is derived from the famous Talbot, the terror of France: hence they have been ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 493, June 11, 1831 • Various

... individual, even in a convent, or even by a giant such as Dante, or as Thomas Acquinas, the first of them unquestionably master of all the knowledge that was within the compass of his age. There were, however, libraries even in the West, formed by Charlemagne and by others after him. We are told that Alcuin, in writing to the great monarch, spoke with longing of the relative wealth of England in these precious estates. Mr. Edwards, whom I have already quoted, mentions Charles the Fifth of France, in 1365, as a collector ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone

... art, and that when a famine raged they were all kept in the city, though besides all the strangers all the philosophers were forced to leave. Their popularity continued until the sixth century, and it is evident from a decree of Charlemagne that they were not lost, or at least, had been revived in his time. Those of us who have enjoyed the performance of the original Ravel troupe will admit that the art still survives, though not with the magnificence or perfection, especially with reference to serious subjects, which ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... still earlier, and yet, in spite of his musty citations, he was a master mind. He knew what he knew (he guessed at nothing), and, sitting there in that bare little bank, I listened in silence what time he marched from Zoroaster down to Charlemagne, and from Rome to Paris. He quoted from Buckle and Bacon and Macaulay till I marveled at the contrast between his great shaggy head and its commonplace surroundings, for in the midst of a discussion of the bleak problems of ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... of antiquity had been left naked of their precious ornaments; but the Romans would demolish with their own hands the arches and walls, if the hope of profit could surpass the cost of the labor and exportation. If Charlemagne had fixt in Italy the seat of the Western Empire, his genius would have aspired to restore, rather than to violate, the works of the Caesars: but policy confined the French monarch to the forests of Germany; his taste could be gratified only by destruction; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... properly, Karl, King of the Franks, consecrated Roman Emperor in St. Peter's on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, and known to posterity as the Great (chiefly by his agglutinative Gallicised denomination, of Charlemagne), was a man great in all ways, physically and mentally. Within a couple of centuries after his death Charlemagne became the centre of innumerable legends; and the myth-making process does not seem to have been sensibly interfered with by the ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... Dresden Madonna. Charles the Fifth stooped to pick up the pencil of Titian, saying "it becomes Caesar to serve Titian!" True enough; but this unprecedented compliment from the imperial successor of Charlemagne attests the glory of the portrait-painter. The female figures of Titian, so much admired under the names of Flora, La Bella, his daughter, his mistress, and even his Venus, were portraits from life. Rembrandt turned from his great triumphs in his own peculiar school to portraits of unwonted ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner

... King of the Franks, consecrated Roman Emperor in St. Peter's on Christmas Day, A.D. 800, and known to posterity as the Great (chiefly by his agglutinative Gallicised denomination of Charlemagne), was a man great in all ways, physically and mentally. Within a couple of centuries after his death Charlemagne became the centre of innumerable legends; and the myth-making process does not seem to have been sensibly interfered with by the existence of sober and truthful histories ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley

... Queen Elizabeth wrote a letter to Cleopatra, do you know whether I mean it or not? And if I say that Richard the Third was baptized by St. Augustine, can you contradict it? And Hannah More wrote a sympathetic letter to Joan of Arc, and Marie Antoinette danced with Charlemagne, and George Washington was congratulated on becoming President ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin

... And Clotho muttered as she span, While crowned lackeys bore the train Of the pinchbeck Charlemagne,— "Sister, stint not length of thread! Sister, stay the scissors dread! On St. Helen's granite bleak, Hark, the vulture whets his beak!" Spin, spin, Clotho, spin! Lachesis, twist! and Atropos, sever! In the shadow, year out, year in, The silent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... when the barbarians took Rome; and Florence afforded a refuge for those of the nobility who escaped from their terrible grasp: but, for four centuries after, till the time of Charlemagne, there was, indeed, nothing that had either the semblance of power, wealth, or greatness, in Europe. The Saracens, as early as the seventh century, had got possession of Egypt, and had extended their ravages in Asia, to the borders of the Black Sea, having in vain endeavoured to take the ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... a citizen's house, the crown jewels were kept on Easter night, the time of their annual exhibition to the public. Sigismund and Charlemagne were the subjects selected, the former probably because it was he who first gave to Nuremberg the custody of the precious jewels, and the latter because Charlemagne was a favorite hero with the Germans. The Charlemagne is here reproduced. In wonderful jeweled coronation robes, with the coat of arms of France on one side and that of Germany on the other, he is a fine figure well suited to make us feel Durer's power ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor

... sometimes thought of the subject of religion, indeed, is evident, if we believe a conversation which Count Monthoton, one of his attendants, has recorded. "Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself," Napoleon is represented to have said, "founded empires upon force! Jesus Christ alone founded His empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him. I die before my time, and my body will be given back to the earth to ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous

... had a strange longing to know CHARLEMAGNE. To shake him by the hand, to have opportunity of inquiring after his health and that of his family, to hear his whispered reply—that indeed were bliss. But CHARLEMAGNE is dead, and desire must be curbed. The only ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various

... made all Paris shudder, which had furnished the material for so many newspaper articles, and the topic for such indignant comments, was completely forgotten. Indeed, had the tragedy at the Poivriere occurred in the times of Charlemagne, it could not have passed more thoroughly out of people's minds. It was remembered only in three places, at the Depot, at the Prefecture de Police, and at the ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau

... Charles VIII., was a mere boy, but in doing so he followed the intentions of his father Louis XI., the ablest monarch of his age. The other, Saint Louis, was the best, and one of the most vigorous rulers, since the time of Charlemagne. Both these princesses ruled in a manner hardly equalled by any prince among their contemporaries. The emperor Charles the Fifth, the most politic prince of his time, who had as great a number of able men in his service as a ruler ever had, and was one of the least likely of all sovereigns ...
— The Subjection of Women • John Stuart Mill

... always killed; and, by the time I had got them into the middle of a scrape, I always forgot how I had intended to get them out of it. In history, it was very nearly the same. Centuries jostled against each other like a railway collision. I confused Charlemagne with Frederick Barbarossa, and the Cardinal Richelieu with M. Thiers. So, with the exception of the article I alluded to, in your Magazine, and a few letters on the present potato disease in the Gardener's Guide, I am a Great Unpublished—in the same way as I understand ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... was added to drive a pointer—a float carrying a vertical rack, engaging with a cog on the pointer spindle; or a string from the float passed over a pulley attached to the pointer and rotated it as the float rose, after the manner of the wheel barometer (Fig. 153). In 807 A.D. Charlemagne received from the King of Persia a water-clock which struck the hours. It is thus described in Gifford's "History of France":—"The dial was composed of twelve small doors, which represented the division of the hours. Each door opened at the hour ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... north, the Danube on the south, the Rhine on the west, and the Sarmatian Provinces on the east, are the boundaries assigned by Tacitus to Antient Germany. It formed the most extensive portion of the territories of Charlemagne; descended, at his decease, to his son, Lewis the Debonnaire; and, on the partition between his three sons, was allotted to ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler

... would continue,) are so unanimous in acknowledging this truth, that Ariosto, one of the most learned of the Italians, owns in his Orlando, that Charlemagne's knights fought for Hector's helmet. Lastly, there is one proof which admits of no reply; namely, that the ancient Franks to perpetuate the memory of the Trojans, their ancestors, built a new city called Troye, in the province of Champagne; and these modern Trojans have always retained so strong ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers

... excommunicated one another according to their luck in enlisting the emperors on their side. In the IV century they began to burn one another for differences of opinion in such matters. In the VIII century Charlemagne made Christianity compulsory by killing those who refused to embrace it; and though this made an end of the voluntary character of conversion, Charlemagne may claim to be the first Christian who put men to death for any point of doctrine ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... epics (called "Chansons de Gestes", songs of heroic deeds) are those narrative poems which are founded on early French history, and recount the deeds of national heroes. They are, for the most part, based on the deeds of Charlemagne and his nobles. They are peculiar to Northern France. Their date of production extends from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, their best development being in the eleventh ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock

... by Atkins; on Coins and Medals, by a numerous body of gentlemen specified in a section of the writer's Coin Collector, 1896. In the English and American series are the well-known volumes by Henry Stevens and by Sabin, and the sumptuous catalogue of the early Laws and Statutes by Mr. Charlemagne Tower. In the Chetham Society's series, Mr. Jones, late Chetham's Librarian, printed an elaborate list of all the old English books and ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... Monsieur Rogron's (Chevalier of the Legion of Honour) pension for young gentlemen, a correspondence by letter took place between the seduisante Miss Betsi and two young gentlemen of the College of Charlemagne, who were pensioners ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Arthur, in the Mabinogion, exhibits no characteristics of patriotic resistance; his part is limited to uniting heroes around him, to maintaining the retainers of his palace, and to enforcing the laws of his order of chivalry. He is too strong for any one to dream of attacking him. He is the Charlemagne of the Carlovingian romances, the Agamemnon of Homer,—one of those neutral personalities that serve but to give unity to the poem. The idea of warfare against the alien, hatred towards the Saxon, does not appear in a single ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... on Sunday; there I have spent up till now, with the fare and all, 3 florins. At Aachen I saw the well- proportioned pillars with their good capitals of green and red porphyry and granite which Carolus [Charlemagne] had brought from Rome and set up there. These are made truly according to Vitruvius's writings. At Aachen I bought an ox horn for 1 gold florin. I have taken the portraits of Herr Hans Ebner and George Schlaudersbach, and ...
— Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries - [This is our volunteer's translation of the title] • Albrecht Durer

... 7 at Devonport, 1 at Sheerness, 6 at Chatham, 11 at Pembroke, 4 at Deptford, 4 at Woolwich, and one at Mill wall.—Total 39." The French naval force in the Black Sea, under the command of Vice-admiral Hamelin, was composed of the Friedland, Valmy, Ville de Paris, Henri IV., Bayard, Charlemagne, Lena, Lupiter, Marengo, Gomer, Descartes, Vauban, Mogador, Cacique, Magellan, Sane, Caton, Serieuse, Mercure, Oliviere, Beaumanoir, Cerf, Promethee, Salamandre, Heron, and Monette. The squadron of Viceadmiral Bruat, intended to act in the Black Sea, the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... kingdom of the Heruli was established in Italy. In 493 this was succeeded by the Ostrogoths, which continued for sixty years and was afterwards succeeded by the Lombards. The Lombard Kingdom was overthrown by Pepin and Charlemagne, who gave a large part of the conquered territory to the pope, thus favoring the papacy with her first temporal power. This grant completed the symbol of Daniel's vision by constituting the papacy a temporal as well as an ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith

... War-hardships; and the Doctors recommend Aix. After Wesel, and the Westphalian Inspections, Friedrich, accordingly, proceeds to Aix; and for about a fortnight (23th August-9th September) drinks the waters in that old resting-place of Charlemagne;—particulars not given in the Books; except that "he lodged with Baege" (if any mortal now knew Baege), and did an Audience or so to select persons now unknown. He is not entirely incognito, but is without royal state; the "guard of twenty men, the escort ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... Salimbeni and Buondelmonte on the left, and Palazzo Spini on the right, you come into Borgo Santi Apostoli, where, facing the Piazzetta del Limbo, is the little church de' Santi Apostoli, which, if we may believe the inscription on the facade, was founded by Charlemagne and consecrated by Turpin before Roland and Oliver. However that may be, it is, with the exception of the Baptistery, the oldest church on this side Arno, and already existed outside the first walls of the city. Within, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... migrations, and serving to restore something like order to Central Europe, there now rose into power in France, under Clovis and Charlemagne, and spread their sway far across the Rhine, the great Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties. Charlemagne's empire came to embrace in central Europe a region extending east of the Rhine as far as Hungary, and from north to south from the German ocean ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various

... proconsul; "the weapon which was the pride and bane of my father, famed Miramon Lluagor, because it was the sword which Galas made, in the old time's heyday, for unconquerable Charlemagne. Clerks declare it is a magic weapon and that the man who wields it is always unconquerable. I do not know. I think it is as difficult to believe in sorcery as it is to be entirely sure that all we know is not the sorcery of a drunken wizard. I very potently believe, however, ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... work, a work legitimate in itself, a work which the abuses of a crafty priesthood had made necessary, seven times, and whose accomplishment they had seven times partially and gradually undertaken, since the time of Charlemagne,—the philosophers of the second school, the irreligious school, the atheistic school, of Diderot and Helvetius, drove the masses from stupidity even to impiety, and the demagogues of '93 forced them from impiety to Atheism, and from ...
— Atheism Among the People • Alphonse de Lamartine

... penetrates to the heart. Admiral Guepratte, commanding the French Fleet, called at 9.45 and in due course I returned his visit, when I was electrified to find at his cabin door no common sentry but a Beefeater armed with a large battleaxe, dating from about the period of Charlemagne. The Admiral lives quite in the old style and is a delightful personage; very gay and very eager for a chance to measure himself against the enemy. Guepratte, though he knows nothing officially, believes that his Government ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... should possess, for his little day, the banks that bloomed by its everlasting course. By a small mosque halted the flower of the army. Surrounded by the arch-priests of that mighty hierarchy, the peers and princes of a court that rivalled the Rolands of Charlemagne, was seen the kingly form of Ferdinand himself, with Isabel at his right hand and the highborn dames of Spain, relieving, with their gay colours and sparkling gems, the sterner splendour of the crested helmet ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... not at all your death that I desire, but my niece's establishment in life. At the same time, it must come to that if you prove obstinate. Your family, Monsieur de Beaulieu, is very well in its way; but if you sprung from Charlemagne[7], you should not refuse the hand of a Maletroit with impunity—not if she had been as common as the Paris road—not if she was as hideous as the gargoyle over my door. Neither my niece nor you, nor my own private feelings, move me at all in this ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... year died the Emperor Charlemagne, after a reign of five and forty winters; and Archbishop Wulfred, accompanied by Wigbert, Bishop of Wessex, ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown

... See Wright's Essays, ii. 207. "The name of Witikind, the famous opponent of Charlemagne, who always fled before his sight, concealed himself in the forests, and returned again in his absence, is no more than uitu chint, in Old High Dutch, and signifies the son of the wood, an appellation which he could never have received at his birth, since it denotes an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... and ready for emergencies. No such man feels that he can afford to indulge his appetites, except on rare occasions. One of the leading peculiarities of all great generals has been their temperance. It marked Caesar, Charlemagne, Gustavus Adolphus, Frederic the Great, Cromwell, and Napoleon. When Alexander gave himself up to banquets, his conquests ended. Even such a self-indulgent, pleasure-seeking man as Louis XIV. always maintained the decencies of society amid his dissipated ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord

... in all four quarters of the globe? And if truth to life is the main thing the drama should keep in view, how is it possible for any average understanding to be satisfied when the action is supposed to pass in the time of King Pepin or Charlemagne, and the principal personage in it they represent to be the Emperor Heraclius who entered Jerusalem with the cross and won the Holy Sepulchre, like Godfrey of Bouillon, there being years innumerable between the one and the other? ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... came his son Pepin,[15] who held out his hand to the bishops of Rome, acknowledged their vast civilizing influence, saved them from the Lombards, and joined church and state once more in harmony. After Pepin came his son, Charlemagne, whose reign marks an epoch of the world. The peace his fathers had striven for, he won at last, though only, as they had done, by constant fighting. He attacked the Arabs and reduced them to permanent feebleness in Spain. He turned backward the Teutonic movement, marching ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... has happened everywhere, and happens still. Whoever wishes to learn how tradition or common report treats historical facts, should compare the Guenther or Etzel of the Nibelungen with the Gundicarius or Attila of history, or Charles the Great crowned by the Pope with the Charlemagne who besieged Jerusalem, or Hruodlandus with Roland, or Arturus with Arthur. Or, to come to later days, we need only recall the wonderful tales of the French journals during the last Franco-German War, and we shall be astonished at the manner in which, ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller

... of Luneville, February, 1801, now seemed to lend color to Napoleon's greatest delusion of grandeur; he would restore the ancient domain of Charlemagne, comprising France, Germany and Italy! Signing with Prussia and Bavaria, Napoleon confiscated broad Papal domains along the Rhine, lands that had been in possession of the church since Roman times. With this bribe for secular princes, as the price ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... well, mounted on a charger that went swiftly, rode before the duke singing of Charlemagne and of Roland, and of Oliver and the vassals who died at Roncesval. When they had ridden until they came close to the English, 'Sire,' said Taillefer, 'a grace! I have served you long; for all my service, you owe me a debt. To-day, an it please you, repay it me. For ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace

... also recommended this recurrence to the former kingly position. Mankind have infinite difficulty in reaching new creations, and therefore cherish the once developed forms as sacred heirlooms. Accordingly Caesar very judiciously connected himself with Servius Tullius, in the same way as subsequently Charlemagne connected himself with Caesar, and Napoleon attempted at least to connect himself with Charlemagne. He did so, not in a circuitous way and secretly, but, as well as his successors, in the most open manner ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... the Republic one and indivisible, embodying Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, at the end of the eighteenth century, will forever disgrace the judgment and moral condition of the France which knew Charlemagne. ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... pictures which can hardly be called his own. Such are "The Battle of Tolbiac," and "Charlemagne dictating his Statutes." These were painted by the command of Louis Philippe, who was his constant friend and patron. The young princes were his pupils; and Scheffer was careful to form them to better taste than that of the citizen monarch who has lined Versailles with poor pictures. For the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various

... Constantinople. This fact must not be overlooked in estimating the various causes which led to the regeneration of the Eastern Empire under the iconoclast emperors. While the Pope winked at the disorders in the palace of Charlemagne, the monks of the East prepared the public mind for the dethronement of Constantine VI. because he obtained an illegal divorce and formed a second marriage. The corruption of monks and the irregularities prevalent in the monasteries of the West ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen

... returning from market, having sold his corn and two fat pigs. He was riding his pretty mare, who, near Azay, commenced to caper about without the slightest cause, and poor Cochegrue trotted and ambled along counting his profits. At the corner of the old road of the Landes de Charlemagne, they came upon a stallion kept by the Sieur de la Carte, in a field, in order to have a good breed of horses, because the said animal was fleet of foot, as handsome as an abbot, and so high and mighty that the admiral who came to ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... 912, when, upon the death of Louis III, the last prince of the Carlovingian race, Conrad, Duke of Franconia, was elected Emperor and the Empire, which had till then been hereditary in the descendants of Charlemagne, became elective and remained thenceforth ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... truth was a new force in their experience, and the sympathetic and self-denying labors of a few missionaries tamed the fierce Vikings to whom Britain had become a prey, and whose incursions even the armies of Charlemagne could not resist. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... may be added, that, in historic eras, the mythopoeic fancy is not inactive. Stories of marvelous adventure clustered about the old Celtic King Arthur of England and the "knights of the Round-Table," and fill up the chronicles relating to Charlemagne. Wherever there is a person who kindles popular enthusiasm, myths accumulate. This is eminently true in an atmosphere like that which prevailed in the mediaeval period, when ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... contemporary, adorned his cathedral of Hexham in Northumberland with what was then considered to be a magnificent library, it was entirely composed of histories of the Apostles and martyrs to whose relics he had dedicated the altars of his church.[36] Meanwhile, the glorification of Charlemagne and his paladins, the great champions of Christendom, exercised the invention of the minstrels of France. But activity of mind increasing, additional subjects for entertainment were demanded, and the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... went to school at the feet of Arabian masters. To bring order out of chaotic ruin, to rear a new civilisation and blend hostile and unequal races into a nation, the thing wanted was not liberty but force. And for centuries all progress is attached to the action of men like Clovis, Charlemagne, and William the Norman, who were resolute and peremptory, and prompt ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... Carnegie that he won his success because he had the knack of picking the right men has become a classic in current speech. Augustus Caesar built up and extended the power of the Roman Empire because he knew men. The careers of Charlemagne, Napoleon, Disraeli, Washington, Lincoln, and all the empire builders and empire saviours hold their places in history because these men knew how to recognize, how to select, and how to develop to the highest degree the abilities of their co-workers. The ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... As a matter of fact, it hardly is modern. The accommodation for the weary traveller is of a satisfying and gratifying quality, as the comparatively few visitors to the place well know. The city is an ancient foundation, having been known as the Noviodunum of the Romans. Here Charlemagne was crowned King of the Franks in 768, and Hugh Capet elected king in 987; and here, in an important stronghold of Catholicism, as it had long been, Calvin was born ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... that at that point," he continued, designating it with his cane, "the river was at one time so shallow, owing to a ridge of rocks under its bed, that it could be forded by persons on foot. One time when Charlemagne—or Charles the Great—was battling against the Saxons, he was compelled to retreat before them, and they were in hot pursuit. The French forces were weak, while the Saxons were strong, but if he and his army could cross the Main, all would be safe. ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang

... profound study, wide sympathies, and a free comprehensiveness, to keep a steady footing and a clear eye in the midst of this gigantic, rolling conglomeration of contradictions, eccentricities, and singularities of all kinds. Here every sort of demon and devil, genius and ghost, Lucinde and Charlemagne, Alarcos, Maria, Plato, Spinoza and Bonald, Goethe consecrated and Goethe condemned, revolution and hierarchy, reel about restlessly, come together, and, what is the strangest thing of all, do not clash. For Schlegel, however many Protean shapes he might assume, never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... glitter hauberk, helm, and lance, And banner waves, and trumpet sounds, And ladies ride with hawk on wrist, And mighty warriors sweep along, Magnified by the purple mist, The dusk of centuries and of song. The chronicles of Charlemagne, Of Merlin and the Mort d'Arthure, Mingled together in his brain With tales of Flores and Blanchefleur, Sir Ferumbras, Sir Eglamour, Sir Launcelot, Sir Morgadour, Sir Guy, Sir Bevis, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... coercion disappear with the growth of civilisation. It is not abolished but transformed. Lincoln and Moltke commanded a force which would have crushed Charlemagne and his paladins and peers like so many eggshells.[127] Scott, in the 'Fair Maid of Perth,' describes the 'Devil's Dick of Hellgarth' who followed the laird of Wamphray, who rode with the lord of Johnstone, who was banded with the Earl ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... spoken of as Monaco. The tradition of its original foundation is carefully preserved in the civic coat-of-arms, which represents a gigantic monk with a club in his hand—Hercules in a friar's robe. In the days of Charlemagne the Moors invaded Monaco, and remained there until A.D. 968, when a Genoese captain named Grimaldi volunteered to assist the Christian inhabitants in driving the infidels from their shores. He was victorious, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... some essays which follow, where she carries herself back to "Old Rome and New France," to Charlemagne, to Joan of Arc, and other ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... into his old role of hypocrite, in which he had formerly succeeded so well. Only the evening before he had returned to the house of Madame de la Roche-Jugan, and made honorable amends for his philosophical heresies; for he was like the Saxons in the time of Charlemagne, who asked to be baptized every time they wanted new tunics. Madame de la Roche-Jugan had given a kind reception to this sad prodigal son, but she chilled perceptibly on seeing him more discreet than she desired on certain subjects, the mystery of which ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... missionaries,—though already at that time illuminated by the immortal Gothic version of the New Testament preceding Ulppilas, and still surviving,—sheltered through ages in the north and east vast tribes of idolaters, some awaiting the baptism of Charlemagne in the eighth century and the ninth, others actually resuming a fierce countenance of heathenism for the martial zeal of crusading knights in the thirteenth and fourteenth. The history of Constantine has grossly misled the world. It was ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... Charlemagne, Emperor of Germany, who is known as a Christian prince, and Alfred the Great, of England, lived in the eight and ninth centuries. The darkest period in the dark ages was between the fifth and the eleventh, but they are known as the earliest ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various

... full of common sense sounds the following article from the Capitularies of Charlemagne, De ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... King Charlemagne comes Angelica (daughter to the king of Cathay, or India) and her brother Argalia. Angelica is the most beautiful woman any of the Peers have ever seen, and all want her. However, in order to take her as wife they must first defeat Argalia in combat. ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... other hand has it been so feeble as not to be able, when afraid of losing its temporalities, to call in a foreign potentate, as a counterpoise in its defense against those powers which threatened to become supreme. Of the truth of this, past history furnishes many instances; as when, by the help of Charlemagne, the Popes expelled the Lombards; and when in our own days they humbled Venice by the aid of France, and afterwards drove out the French by calling in the Swiss. So then the Church, being on the one hand too weak to grasp the whole of Italy, and at the same time too jealous to allow another power ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... adventure! We shall have minstrels singing ballads by the threave under our windows, and such twangling of harps as would be enough to frighten our walls from their foundations, as clerks say happened to those of Jericho—We shall have as many knights-errant around us as ever had Charlemagne, or King Arthur. Mercy on me! A less matter than a fine and noble recluse immured—so will they term it—in a tower, under the guardianship of an old Flemish weaver, would bring half the chivalry ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... it is not the passage in Tacitus only which indicates for us this god or hero: we cannot doubt the existence of one of this name among these peoples, since Charlemagne found and destroyed near the Weser the column called Irminsaeule, erected in honour of this god. And that combined with the passage in Tacitus leaves us with the conclusion that it was not that famous Arminius who was an enemy ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz



Words linked to "Charlemagne" :   Carolingian, Carlovingian, Holy Roman Emperor



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