Carolingian Empire
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The Carolingian Empire was the realm built by the family of Charles Martel and unified by his grandson Charlemagne, who ruled from 768 to 814. By conquest and alliance he subdued the Lombard kingdom in Italy, the Avars in the Danube basin and the Saxons beyond the Rhine, where the Saxon Wars lasted thirty years and ended in forced baptism. On Christmas Day 800 Pope Leo III crowned him emperor of the Romans in St Peter's, reviving the idea of a western empire and setting a pattern for relations between papacy and kingship. Government rested on counts, on paired missi dominici sent to inspect them, and on assemblies held in spring and autumn; the capitulary of 802 defined royal duties. Charlemagne sponsored a revival of learning, the Carolingian minuscule made manuscripts legible, and scholars such as Alcuin of York, Paul the Deacon and Einhard worked at his court in Aachen. His son Louis the Pious quarrelled with his own sons, and the empire was divided for good by the Treaty of Verdun in 843 among Lothair, Louis and Charles the Bald. Further partitions produced West and East Francia, the seeds of France and Germany, and by 888 the great families that followed had grown into rival dynasties.