ABSTRACT
If we examine it more closely, however, we soon perceive that the reign of Charlemagne, from whatever point of view we regard it, was only the continuation, and, as it were, the prolongation of his father’s reign. It exhibits no originality: the alliance with the Church, the struggle against the pagans-the Lombards and Musulmans-the transformations in the methods of government, the endeavour to rouse scholarship from its torpor-the germ of all these things is visible under Pippin. Like all those who have changed history, Charles did no more than accelerate the evolution which social and political needs had imposed upon his time. The part he played was so completely adapted to the new tendencies of his epoch that it is very difficult to distinguish how much of his work was personal to himself and how much it owed to the force of circumstances.
