Many famous characters in history have equalled or surpassed Charlemagne as general, statesman, or legislator--there have been better scholars and more refined princes--but few or none have followed such divers aims and achieved by the sheer force of their personality such memorable results. Painters and chroniclers love to depict him in old age still majestic; and in truth up till nearly the end of his long reign he kept the fire and vigour of his youth, swimming like a boy in the baths of Aachen, or hunting the wild boar upon the hills, drawing up capitularies, or dictating advice to his bishops, doing, in fact, whatever came to hand with an intensity that would have exhausted any one less healthy and self-reliant. Fortunately for Charlemagne he had the sturdy constitution of his race, and when at last he died an old man in 814 people believed that he did not share the common fate of humanity. Nearly two hundred years later, it was said, when the funeral vault was opened, he was found seated in his chair of state, firm of flesh as in life, with his crown on his snowy hair, and his sword clasped in his hand. ‘Our Lord gave this boon to Charlemagne that men should speak of him as long as the world endureth.’ It is a boast that as centuries pass, sweeping away the memory of lesser heroes, time still justifies. _Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368-73._ Charlemagne, King of the Franks 768-800 Charlemagne, Emperor of the West 800-14 Battle of Roncesvalles 778 Invasion of Lombardy 773 Haroun al-Raschid died 809 St. Boniface 715 IX THE INVASIONS OF THE NORTHMEN At the death of Charlemagne the Empire that he had built up stretched from Denmark to the Pyrenees and the Duchy of Spoletum south of Rome, from the Atlantic on the West to the Baltic, Bohemia, and the Dalmatian coast. It had been a brave attempt to realize the old Roman ideal of all civilized Europe gathered under one ruler; but he himself was well aware that the foundations he had laid were weak, his own personality that must vanish the mortar holding them together. Without his genius and the terror of his name his possessions were only too likely to fall away; and therefore, instead of attempting to leave a united Empire, he nominated one son to be emperor in name, but made a rough division of his territory between three. Only the death of two just before his own defeated his aims and united the inheritance under the survivor, Louis.