Adventures in a Messy Life

Hands on learning for active learners

  • Home page
    • Start Here
    • About Us
    • Get all of the posts now!
    • Disclosure and other blogging information
  • Homeschooling
    • Homeschool Curriculum
    • Why I homeschool (comments from a former teacher)
    • Homeschooling and the Holidays
  • History and geography
    • Ancient History Lessons
    • Modern History lessons
    • American History Lessons
    • LEGO history
  • Science
  • Bible Curriculum
  • STORE

Charlemagne history lesson

April 15, 2015 Ticia 10 Comments

History is an odd thing, there’s some people we know there names and they were pivotal to history, but we don’t know why. That was Charlemagne for me. I know he was a king somewhere after the fall of Rome and before the Protestant Reformation, but that’s a span of 1000 years to place him in.  Here’s our Charlemagne history lesson.

Charlemagne history lesson

Who is Charlemagne?

Charlemagne was the King of France from the late 700s to early 800s.  He was also the last Roman Emperor.

How can he be that if the Roman Empire fell 300 years earlier, you ask?  I’m glad you asked that.

 

Charlemagne history lesson

I just realized before I can really cover Charlemagne, I should probably have covered his grandfather and father, but I don’t have a fun map activity, so I’ll just tell you they were interesting and they’ll get briefly mentioned come Christmas when I talk about Saint Boniface.

Charlamagne history lesson mapwork

Charlemagne jointly ruled with his brother at first, but with the not at all mysterious death of his brother Charlemagne became sole ruler of the Franks.

Charlamagne history lesson France

Charlemagne looked out over his kingdom and thought, I need more.  So he marched East towards the Germanic tribes and the Alps. (I drew this on my giant European map while the kids drew theirs on a map I’d printed from Wondermaps {affiliate link}).

Charlamagne history lesson France barriers

In an act of daring he traversed the Alps and in an odd series of events ended up becoming king of part of Italy through a very careful treaty with the Pope, who also ruled large parts of Italy at that time.

 

Have you ever seen the map of the worlds?  You can see the Papal state rise and shrink in Italy

 

From there he headed over to the Germanic tribes and conquered large portions of them recreating a portion of the Western Roman empire at which point the pope crowned him “Holy Roman Emperor,” thus becoming the first HRE (insert obligatory joke: It was not holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire).

{Side note, there’s a lot of politics hidden in that act.  It’s a subtle statement Empress Irene over at the Byzantine Empire is NOT heir to the Roman Empire, it’s also a renunciation of her religious beliefs, AND it shows the Pope has the authority to make and unmake kings and emperors, and is of higher authority than the kings}

Charlamagne history lesson Aquataine

Now while all of this is going on there’s also a minor rebellion going on back at Aquitaine, one of his sons puts that down and the capital gets moved there.

Charlamagne history lesson Abd al Rahman

In the meantime there’s Saracens in Spain.  Ostensibly Spain has been Islamic for the past several hundred years, and more of Europe would have been but Charlemagne’s Grandfather stopped that flat.  A group approaches Charlemagne to help them out against Abd-Al-Rhaman, and Charlemagne decides to help them out.

 

Unfortunately for Charlemagne his campaign was not successful and he had to hightail it back to France before making another attempt.  He tried several times to successfully conquer Spain, but never could.

 

What the history of Charlemagne teaches us

Charlemagne history lesson

Charlemagne believed firmly in education.  He insisted every monastery have a free school.  He established the Carolignian  handwriting (print writing) which we still use today.  He was an impressive administrator.

 

He also set up the template for both the kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire which later became Germany.

 

Oh and he inspired Napoleon to recreate his kingdom and the glory of his empire a few hundred years later.

 This was part of our Mystery of History 2 lessons, for more ideas for that time of history check out my pinterest board:

https://www.pinterest.com/ticiam/mystery-of-history-2/

** Charlemagne statue found here, picture was cropped and writing was added

history mapwork, middle ages, Mystery of History 2

Comments

  1. Almost Unschoolers says

    April 15, 2015 at 2:17 pm

    Hmm…I guess I knew less about him than I thought. Interesting.

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      April 16, 2015 at 7:37 am

      I found it interesting too.

  2. maryanne @ mama smiles says

    April 16, 2015 at 12:17 am

    I lived in France and I am related to Charlemagne (although I always wonder if that is true or if people just claimed that), but I know surprisingly little about the man.

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      April 16, 2015 at 7:38 am

      I think he’s one of the people most of us only know his name and he lived in Europe (I know that’s about what I knew on him prior to this lesson, middle ages has always been my weak point).

  3. Claire says

    April 16, 2015 at 5:50 am

    We read a fantastic book on Charlemagne, which everyone really enjoyed. I can’t remember what it is called off hand but I can look it up if you like?

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      April 16, 2015 at 7:38 am

      I’d love it if you would.

  4. Natalie PlanetSmartyPants says

    April 17, 2015 at 12:12 am

    Story of the World covered him too pretty well. I love the map that you included in this post.

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      April 20, 2015 at 12:54 pm

      We use it all the time now, it’s been great for history. I’ve been slowly making one for each continent.

  5. Marie-Claude Leroux says

    April 20, 2015 at 11:28 am

    Well, my lack of historical knowledge is showing because his name just rang a little bell that I think I’d heard that before… thank you for educating me 🙂

    Reply
    • Ticia says

      April 20, 2015 at 12:55 pm

      You’re welcome 🙂

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Ticia Adventures in Mommydom Hi, I'm Ticia! This is the adventures of my family in life and learning. Follow along with us as we share our adventures. We're having a lot of fun and learning as we go.

Help!!!! I need to know:

Categories

 book and a movie combo

Copyright © 2023 ·