INTRODUCTION
The exploits of Charles the Great, who by his achievements as conqueror and legislator, as reformer of learning and missionary, so deeply changed the face of Western Europe, who during a reign of nearly half a century maintained, by his armies, the authority of his powerful sceptre, from the southern countries of Spain and Italy to the more northern regions of Denmark, Poland, and Hungary, must have made a profound and unalterable impression on the minds of his contemporaries, so that for centuries afterward they continued to live in the memory of the people.