A careful analysis of the character of Charles the Great shows that he was a sincere Christian and faithful churchgoer, a great almsgiver and very kind to the poor, and a man who devoted his life to the upbuilding of a Christian civilisation.[318:1] Yet he was guilty of deeds which a higher conception of Christian morals condemns as un-Christian. He sacrificed thousands of lives to his passions and ambitions; for thirty years he waged a war of extermination against the Saxons and murdered more than 4000 prisoners in cold blood. Like Mohammed, he made his motto, submission to Christianity or death. Christians of that day, for the most part, pronounced his policy right, although some of the greatest, like Alcuin, denounced it. He had nine wives and concubines, and, like Henry VIII. of England, had little conscience in disposing of them. He was not highly cultured, yet he spoke Latin with ease and knew some Greek. When an old man, he learned to write and deserves great credit for the manner in which he encouraged education. He cultivated the society of the most cultured men in Europe and from them imbibed much. At meals he had read the heroic deeds of his ancestors, or some work of the Church Fathers like Augustine's _City of God_. As a warrior and statesman, only Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, and Constantine before his day can be compared with him. He was the first and greatest of all the German Emperors. Since his time, only Otto the Great, Peter the Great, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon the Great, have any claim to rank as his peers. The Moses of the Middle Ages, he left an indelible stamp of his genius on Germany and France, continues to be the only common hero of both of these great nations, and through them modified the whole western world.[318:2]