But the heroic strain in the Merovingian blood soon exhausted itself. The kings became effeminate, luxurious, and, after a time, too indolent even to govern, and finally gave entire control of state affairs to a royal steward, known as "_maire du palais_" or _major domus_, who was indeed king _de facto_, with authority supreme over the king himself. Pepin was the last of these royal stewards. Conscious of his own superior fitness, he took the crown from the long, perfumed locks of the last Merovingian king and placed it upon his own head. What matter that he had no drop of royal blood in his veins? He held the sceptre with firm hand, by the divine right of ability, leaving it upon his death to his second son Charlemagne, who was destined to wield it by divine right of born conqueror and ruler of men. CHAPTER VI. This colossal figure stands the one supreme historical landmark midway between Julius Cæsar and Napoleon Bonaparte. In looking back, he saw not his equal in history until he beheld Cæsar. Nor in looking forward would he have seen another until just one thousand years later, when the world seemed to have found another master in Napoleon Bonaparte. In the amplitude of his intelligence, in the splendor of his attributes, and in his seven feet of stature, Charlemagne was every inch a king. He was twenty-nine years old when, by the death of his father, Pepin, he became monarch, and set about his task, which was, to develop a great empire--overturning, conquering, despotic, often cruel, but always with the high purpose of giving to his race a higher civilization. In twenty-nine years more this task was accomplished, and a map of the German Empire was a map of Europe. On Christmas day, in the year 800, in the Cathedral of St. Peter's, at Rome, he received the imperial crown from Pope Leo III., and was greeted with cries of "Life and victory to Carolus Magnus, crowned by God Emperor of the Romans;" and at that moment he stood at the head of an empire which included all Christendom. Charlemagne acknowledged the pope who crowned him as his spiritual sovereign, while, on the other hand, the pope bowed before the emperor who appointed him, as his temporal sovereign. It was a magnificent, all-embracing scheme of empire, of which the spiritual head was at Rome, and the temporal at Aix-la-Chapelle. It seemed as if by this dual supremacy Charlemagne had provided for all possible exigencies of human government. He rested content, no doubt thinking he had embodied a perfect ideal in creating a system which should thus coördinate and embrace both the spiritual and temporal needs of an empire. Unfortunately, in order to be realized, it needed always the wisest of emperors and best of popes. As soon as his controlling hand was removed unexpected dangers assailed his work.