The impression which his reign made upon men's minds grew even after his death. He became the hero of a whole cycle of romantic but wholly unhistoric adventures and achievements which were as devoutly believed for centuries as his most authentic deeds. In the fancy of an old monk in the monastery of St. Gall,[40] writing of Charlemagne not long after his death, the king of the Franks swept over Europe surrounded by countless legions of soldiers who formed a very sea of bristling steel. Knights of superhuman valor formed his court and became the models for the chivalrous spirit of the following centuries. Distorted but imposing, the Charlemagne of poetry meets us all through the Middle Ages. A study of Charlemagne's reign will substantiate our first impression that he was a truly remarkable person, one of the greatest figures in the world's records and deservedly the hero of the Middle Ages. To few men has it been given to influence so profoundly the course of European progress. We shall consider him first as a conqueror, then as an organizer and creator of governmental institutions, and lastly as a promoter of culture and enlightenment. [Sidenote: Charlemagne's idea of a great Christian empire.] 29. It was Charlemagne's ideal to bring all the German peoples together into one great Christian empire, and he was wonderfully successful in attaining his end. Only a small portion of what is now called Germany was included in the kingdom ruled over by Pippin. Frisia and Bavaria had been Christianized, and their native rulers had been induced by the efforts of Charlemagne's predecessors and of the missionaries, especially Boniface, to recognize formally the overlordship of the Franks. Between these two half-independent countries lay the unconquered Saxons. They were as yet pagans and appear to have still clung to much the same institutions as those under which they lived when the Roman historian Tacitus described them seven centuries earlier. [Sidenote: The conquest of the Saxons.]