soldiers through difficulties and reverses to ultimate victory; a
dreamer whose imagination kindled whenever he came into contact with the
great ideas, Christian or pagan, of an older world; a practical
statesman whose innate love of order and respect for justice were
coupled with a gift for organisation and the power of extracting their
best work from his subordinates, it is not for any want of natural
qualifications that his claim to rank with the great world-heroes can be
challenged. The shortcomings of his work are merely those of the race
and the age to which he belonged. The highest statesmanship is only
possible when the statesman has at his disposal the accumulated
experience and the specialised capacity of a civilisation which is old
and at the same time vigorous.

The policy of Charles in his period of sole rule (771-814) is
Janus-headed; it looks forward and looks back. A true Austrasian, he is
faithful to the old Frankish ideal of military conquest; but he gives it
a new meaning, and besides fulfilling the projects of his predecessors
goes beyond the horizon of their most ambitious enterprises. In his
friendship for the Pope, in his care for ecclesiastical reform, he is
his father's son; but the relations of the son with the Church have a
new purpose and involve more than one breach with the past. His
administration is largely guided by the traditional standard of royal
duty; he is a notable steward of his demesnes; he is the reliever of the
poor, the refuge of the defenceless, the champion of justice. But he is
also a far-sighted reformer adapting old administrative methods to the
requirements of a new political fabric. In fact, to epitomise all these
antitheses in one, he is the heir of an old barbarian monarchy and also
the founder of a new Empire.

The story of his conquests reads like the epitome of a lost romance--so