In an age when the usual penalty for defeat was death, Charlemagne several times spared the lives of his defeated foes; yet in 782 at Verden, after a Saxon uprising, he ordered 4,500 Saxons beheaded. He compelled the clergy and nobles to reform, but he divorced two of his four wives without any cause.

The Massacre of Verden was an event during the Saxon Wars where the Frankish king Charlemagne ordered the death of 4,500 Saxons in October 782.

Charlemagne commuted Pepin’s death sentence, having him tonsured and exiled to the monastery of Prüm instead….

The most common account is that he died of a nosebleed, though what caused it is a matter of debate, with one historian proposing a peptic ulcer as the underlying issue. Whatever the cause, after his death Charlemagne concentrated all of Carloman’s land and power and became the sole King of the Franks.

Einhard, also spelled Eginhard, (born c. 770, Maingau, Franconia [Germany]—died March 14, 840, Seligenstadt, Franconia), Frankish historian and court scholar whose writings are an invaluable source of information on Charlemagne and the Carolingian Empire.

1. The idea of the “Dark Ages” came from later scholars who were heavily biased toward ancient Rome. In the years following 476 A.D., various Germanic peoples conquered the former Roman Empire in the West (including Europe and North Africa), shoving aside ancient Roman traditions in favor of their own.

The first person to coin the term ‘Dark Ages’ was believed to be Francesco Petrarca (known as Petrarch), an Italian scholar of the 14th century. He bestowed this label upon the period in which he lived as he was dismayed at the lack of good literature at that time.

The 13th century was the apex of medieval civilization. The classic formulations of Gothic architecture and sculpture were achieved. Many different kinds of social units proliferated, including guilds, associations, civic councils, and monastic chapters, each eager to obtain some measure of autonomy.

The Middle Ages, the medieval period of European history between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Renaissance, are sometimes referred to as the “Dark Ages.”

Anglo-Saxon England

Before Rome: the ‘Celts’ The idea came from the discovery around 1700 that the non-English island tongues relate to that of the ancient continental Gauls, who really were called Celts.

Londinium

The Britons (Latin: Pritani), also known as Celtic Britons or Ancient Britons, were the indigenous Celtic people who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age into the Middle Ages, at which point they diverged into the Welsh, Cornish and Bretons (among others).