He died at the age of seventy years, in the year of the Lord 814, in the seventh year of the Indiction, on the 5th of the Kalends of February.'" If we sum up his designs and his achievements, we find an admirably sound idea and a vain dream, a great success and a great failure.
Charlemagne took in hand the work of placing upon a solid foundation the Frankish-Christian dominion by stopping, in the north and south, the flood of barbarians and Arabs--Paganism and Islamism.

In that he succeeded: the inundations of Asiatic populations spent their force in vain against the Gallic frontier.

Western and Christian Europe was placed, territorially, beyond reach of attacks from the foreigner and infidel.

No sovereign, no human being, perhaps, ever rendered greater service to the civilization of the world.
Charlemagne formed another conception and made another attempt.

Like more than one great barbaric warrior, he admired the Roman empire that had fallen, its vastness all in one, and its powerful organization under the hand of a single master.