Charlemagne

[Huayna Capac357]

As part of my recent avatar switch to Charlemagne and my ensuing obsession with the HRE, I would like to discuss Charlemagne and his legacy. Is he overall a good leader? What was his most important achievement? And, of course, et cetera.

 

[Sofista]

I reserve to postpone voting to when I've considered it a bit. But because you're "obsessed", I'll relate a couple of trivia, namely, two ways of saying regarding Charley in Italian.

"Farne più di Carlo in Francia" (to do [have done, in pratical usage] more than C. in France") means

Spoiler :

to do, have done many things in life, usually wild things; similar to English "painting the town red".

"Far le cose alla carlona", and the variant "vestire alla carlona" (to do sth. à la C.; to dress like C. did" mean

Spoiler :

to do something in a slapdash manner; to dress shoddily.

 

[Neverwonagame3]

It depends by what you judge a leader by.

Empire Building- Of course. He built a powerful empire. His only failures from this perspective were not changing the laws, and not realising the implications of the HRE. (But it would take a very clever and far-sighed person to see the latter)

Morality- Don't know enough to judge

There are, of course, practically infinite possible sets of criterion.

 

[Ambidexter]

I voted for "excellent and competent." Excellent is really too nebulous a word to describe a leader. Excellent at what? However, Charlemagne was definitely competent.

 

[Quildavyr]

The history has seen only one excellent leader;Iustinianos.

The others are competent.Some of them are near Iustinianos but Charlemagne seems to be way off Iustinianos' standard.He was a good leader imho and voted for "so-so" option.I still wonder why Nicepheros didnt mobilize whole byzantine army and eliminated him though???

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I don't know enough about Charlemagne to have an intelligent opinion of his leadership qualities. But I think I saw a documentary about him that said he pushed literacy, so that's a good leadership quality.

 

[LightSpectra]

He sent money to struggling Christians in foreign territories, he built a massive empire and his reign initiated a revolution in art and medicine. He was a fantastic leader.

 

[fugazi]

The history has seen only one excellent leader;Iustinianos.

The others are competent.Some of them are near Iustinianos but Charlemagne seems to be way off Iustinianos' standard.He was a good leader imho and voted for "so-so" option.I still wonder why Nicepheros didnt mobilize whole byzantine army and eliminated him though???

*coughs Augustus Caesar*

 

[sydhe]

Somewhere between the first two. He did kill an awful lot of Saxons (the ones in Germany), converting them at the point of a sword. Also tore down a lot of castles which might have become useful a few decades later when the Vikings hit, but it did stabilize the empire, which he passed intact to his son (mostly because he only had one surviving son).

He was a strong adminstrator, fine general, and was responsible for a brief cultural renaissance in the middle of the Dark Ages. His empire really required a Charlemagne to run it, so it's no surprise it broke up a few decades after his death.