Captivating History - Holy Roman Empire: A Captivating Guide to the Holy Roman Empire and Carolingian Dynasty

Holy Roman Empire

A Captivating Guide to the Holy Roman Empire and Carolingian Dynasty

Copyright 2019

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Part 1: The Holy Roman Empire

A Captivating Guide to the Union of Smaller Kingdoms That Started During the Early Middle Ages and Dissolved During the Napoleonic Wars

Introduction

A red-bearded king with a blazing sword swept away by the river in his last crusade. A sacrilegious young pope engaged in much debauchery. A fierce foreign princess with an ax to grind and a knack for diplomacy. A dowager empress who refused to let her family down, no matter the cost. An ambitious teenage princess marrying for power and grappling for the right to her throne. A romantic poet, his heart long lost on a woman with whom hed exchanged but one word. And, at the end of it all, a rising tyrant with a blow that felled empires.

These read like the characters of some exciting fantasy, a concoction of imagination to enchant and delight readers. Yet every single one of them was as real as you and me. And they all populated, at some time or another, an empire whose might would hold for a thousand years and whose borders would expand to swallow up the majority of Western Europe: The Holy Roman Empire.

Beginning with Charlemagne, the great and educated king who would serve as an inspiration for world leaders from Frederick II to Adolf Hitler, the Holy Roman Empires intricate ties with the Roman Catholic Church would provide for plenty of excitement and drama in its early years. However, as the empire staggered through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, it would eventually be forced to declare its allegiance with a new way of thinking: Protestantism.

Throughout the story of the Holy Roman Empire, a wealth of fascinating tales from interesting people proliferates. Monks and emperors will clash, poets sing the praises of kings, and the pope rides blind and bareback on a frightened donkey through the streets of Rome. The mightiest monarch in all of Europe walks barefoot in the snow in repentance for his angry deeds, and two rival families stand toe-to-toe for the monarchy. Crusades are lost in war and won in diplomacy, while kings are held ransom, revolts are suppressed, and antipopes crowned. And this incredible tale spanning a full millennium is ready and waiting for you to turn the next page.

Chapter 1 The First Roman Empire

H istorians still remain in dispute over the ethnicity of Flavius Odoacer.

A tall, lean, powerfully built man, Odoacer was a soldier from the top of his head to the worn-out soles of his boots. The naked sword in his hand was not quite as sharp as the flash of fire in his eyes as he towered over the emperor of ancient Rome, demanding his surrender. Whether he was a member of the Germanic tribes acting independently, a former soldier of the Roman army, or even a Hun, it mattered little to the young emperor, Romulus Augustus, who now faced Odoacers bare blade. Romulus had been raised in a cushioned and privileged life in Ravenna as the son of an important commander in the Roman army, and he knew only one thing for sure about the strange mustachioed man who was bent on killing him unless he gave up the empire: Odoacer was a barbarian. And to the noble-blooded young Roman, barbarian meant anyone who came from outside the borders of his empire.

Once, the Roman Empire had been the greatest power in Europe, its borders stretching all the way from Egypt to Great Britain to Gaul to Asia Minor. But now, it was reduced to this single moment: a teenage emperor cowering before a barbarian, trying to decide whether or not to surrender.

* * * *

I t was somewhat ironic that Romulus Augustus, who is often seen as the last emperor of Rome, bore those names.

His first name, Romulus, was then widely believed to be the root of the name Rome. The foundation myth of ancient Rome revolves around two brothers named Romulus and Remus, the sons of a Vestal Virgin and either Mars (the Roman god of war) or Hercules (a demigod hero in Roman mythology). Like Moses in the Nile, Romulus and Remus were thrown into the Tiber River of Italy as babies by a vengeful ruler, being swept away on its turbulent waters. Washed up on the shore, a wild she-wolf discovered the two little babies and suckled them, keeping them alive until a shepherd stumbled upon them and adopted them as his own. As adults, Romulus and Remus were determined to found a city on the very hills that they had roamed with their wild parent when they were just babies. When they couldnt agree on which hill to build the city on, Romulus killed Remus and built his city on Palatine Hill, giving the city his nameRome.