The Saracens marched north through Spain and into the country of the Franks, whose great-great-great-grandchildren are the French people of to-day. Here the victory of the invaders ceased to be so easy, for they were met by a certain Duke Charles, who beat them in a great battle near Tours and drove them back. For his bravery in saving Europe from these dark-skinned enemies, Duke Charles was named Martel, the Franks’ word for “hammer.” Charles the Hammer had a son, Pepin, who was called the Short, because he was not a tall man. But though he was small, Pepin had a big, brave heart. He fought for his country against the Lombards, a savage people in North Italy, and he was rewarded for his valor and success by being made king of the Franks. When Pepin was crowned by the Pope, he had a son Charles, twelve years old. This Charles was so ambitious that, even while a boy, he began to dream of conquering other nations, and becoming king not only of France but of other lands as well. All through his boyhood he dreamed of what he would do if he were king. It was not many years after his father’s death, when he became king in fact, before Charles Martel’s grandson had conquered so many nations in the south and so many savage tribes in the north of Europe that he became a king of kings, or emperor, and received the title of Charlemagne, which means Charles the Great. Perhaps the best thing that Charlemagne ever did was to keep Alcuin, a scholar from Britain, at his court as a trusted friend and teacher. In those days such men in other kings’ palaces were merely chaplains or religious teachers, but Alcuin taught the king, the queen, and the princes grammar, spelling, arithmetic, and other common branches. This Palace School proved to be such a good thing that the emperor ordered that not only any child of a nobleman, but even of the poorest peasant, could come to it if the boy showed talent for learning. The books in the Palace School were printed very slowly with a pen, sometimes in bright inks and gold. As there were no public libraries in those days, Alcuin searched the world for books for his pupils. These parchments were rare and very costly. Instead of Charles’s children going to school, the Palace School went with the children, as the emperor moved from place to place and from palace to palace. Charlemagne’s armies were led by brave knights called paladins. The foremost of these paladins were Roland and Oliver, who fought in combats and tournaments. They were both of heroic size, eight feet tall, and performed the same feats, so that one could not be distinguished from the other. A story is told of these two having fought five days on an island in the River Rhine without either of them gaining the least advantage over the other; so now, when two men are equal in some great struggle, people exclaim--“A Roland for an Oliver!”