What are the coolest anecdotes about Charlemagnes life?

Well he didn't speak French.

French was for the serfs, the upper class would speak Frankish.

He would get plastered every night and then chase courtiers around with a hammer screaming "Now I too am Charles the Hammer!"

If any unlucky courtier was caught, they would immediately be bludgeoned to death. Nobody was safe. Monks, nuns, royal relatives. Anybody. They could all get the hammer.

And the closest languages to Frankish are Dutch and Flemish, which are germanic

Hulagu did the same thing, and he was closely aligned with Christianity.

Rollo was even betterfirst taking the Normandy from the Frenchies in exchange for becoming Christian then sacrificing 100 Christians at his funeral.

t. Cuckson serfs

After a long day of traveling, the emperor Charlemagne stopped at a bishop’s residence to rest, conveniently at dinnertime. In a ninth-century biography of Charlemagne, written by an erudite monk at St. Gall monastery in Switzerland, the author says,

Now on that day, being the sixth day of the week [Friday], he was not willing to eat the flesh of beast or bird. The bishop, being by reason of the nature of the place unable to procure fish immediately, ordered some excellent cheese, white with fat, to be placed before him. Charles….. required nothing else, but taking up his knife and throwing away the mold, which seemed to him abominable, he ate the white of the cheese. Then the bishop, who was standing nearby like a servant, drew close and said “Why do you do that, lord Emperor? You are throwing away the best part.” On the persuasion of the bishop, Charles….. put a piece of the mold in his mouth and slowly ate it and swallowed it like butter. Then, approving the bishop’s advice, he said “Very true, my good host,” and he added, “Be sure to send me every year two cartloads of such cheeses.”

And a pack train of mules complied, appearing every Christmas at Charlemagne’s palace in Aix-la-Chapelle with what most people think was Roquefort cheese.

Of course, storing all that cheese must have given Charlemagne and his entourage some pause and a few moments of queasiness as time went by.

His elephant

He had 4 wives 5 mistresses (4 in the same period of time) and 17 children including 6 bastards
He did not wear a beard (symbol of power for the barbarian kings) because he was civilized (I'm the heir of Rome!)
the beard came from XII century writers as a symbol of virility
He died at 72 of pleurisy caused by the cure he took for the gout (fasting and bath in winter)
His grandfather was Charles Martel the winner of the Moors at Poitiers in 732 (Was Charles Martel german too?)

You mean Karl Martell? Sure he was Germanic.

He spilled the blood of one thousand Saxon men.

He shed the blood of four thousand Saxon men.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis
that he didnt exist and neither did the time he lived in

>Charles Martel
>German
Germanic - but the Franks weren't Germans in the Bavarian sense. More in the Dutch line of the language tree.

>shed blood of the saxon men
>doesn't post the video
youtu.be/MC0S60Gp5rM

This is about the only decent post in this thread.
God bless you.

>and 17 children including 6 bastards...

... these had also many children and grandchildren, and so on. As a result he is "the father of Europe" in a very literal sense.

The year is 800.

Charles is crowned Emperor of the Roman Empire by the Pope. See for a more "colorful" version of the story. This success rings throughout the lands of the Old World. The many petty kings and pagan warlords knew this would change things. Some sent Charles gifts in celebration of his achievement. One such leader was the Caliph and ruler of the Abbasid Empire in Arabia and North Africa. Harun al-Rashid was his name. Harun wanted to congratulate Charles with gifts he thought would be exotic to the Frankish emperor. Charles was elated and constructed a small fleet of ships to take these gifts home.

When the gifts arrived, Charles was shocked to see one of the "pets" Harun promised: an elephant. A fully trained Indian Elephant named Abul-Abbas. Brought by a Frankish Jew named Isaac, the elephant was led North of Italy and into Frankia proper. The elephant was paraded around in various cities by Charles like a teenager in their brand new Mercedes. Unable to just write a simple thank-you for such a magnificent gift, Charles decided to send gifts of his own. His finest wine was put into 14 large caskets and sent to the Caliph in Arabia. The barrels arrived and made quite a stir in the capital: alcohol is haram to consume.

Not wanting to be rude, Harun did partake in a glass of Frankish wine. Then two. Then three. Feeling happy to have such a fine drink, Harun wanted to write back to Charles for such a nice gift. A scribe completed the letter for his master, but when it came time to mark and sign the letter Harun made a decision to do it himself. Rather than resort to his native calligraphy, Harun attempted to sign his name in the Latin alphabet. Not seeing so well after such strong drinking, He skewered his name. The letter finally arrived in the Frankish court sometime later. The letter was signed by Harun... but the spelling was off.

"Aarun". This is where we get the modern name Aaron from.

What about Moses brother? Roughly 800 years before this event?

Moses wasnt even called "Moses". He was Moshe. His brother was Harun as well

I thought Moses is Musa to Arabs

There's actually some evidence that the Frankish variety spoken by the Germanic minority in Gaul as well as the Carolingian court language took part in the OH-German sound shift, which would make them linguistically closer to the High Franconian varieties spoken in parts of Western Germany, Luxembourg and Lorraine as opposed to the Low Franconian out of which the Dutch developed.