His remote ancestors, it is said, were ecclesiastical magnates.
His grandfather was Charles Martel, who gained such signal
victories over the Mohammedan Saracens; his father was Pepin, who
was a renowned conqueror, and who subdued the southern part of
France, or Gaul. He did not rise, like Clovis, from the condition
of a chieftain of a tribe of barbarians; nor, like the founder of
his family, from a mayor of the palace, or minister of the
Merovingian kings. His early life was spent amid the turmoils and
dangers of camps, and as a young man he was distinguished for
precocity of talent, manly beauty, and gigantic physical strength.
He was a type of chivalry, before chivalry arose. He was born to
greatness, and early succeeded to a great inheritance. At the age
of twenty-six, in the year 768, he became the monarch of the
greater part of modern France, and of those provinces which border
on the Rhine. By unwearied activities this inheritance, greater
than that of any of the Merovingian kings, was not only kept
together and preserved, but was increased by successive conquests,
until no so great an empire has ever been ruled by any one man in
Europe, since the fall of the Roman Empire, from his day to ours.
Yet greater than the conquests of Charlemagne was the greatness of
his character. He preserved simplicity and gentleness amid all the
distractions attending his government.

His reign affords a striking contrast to that of all his
predecessors of the Merovingian dynasty,--which reigned from the
immediate destruction of the Roman Empire. The Merovingian
princes, with the exception of Clovis and a few others, were mere
barbarians, although converted to a nominal Christianity. Some of
them were monsters, and others were idiots. Clotaire burned to
death his own son and wife and daughters. Fredegunde armed her