Willa OF TUSCANY

Willa married Berengar II OF ITALY. Berengar (son of Adalbert 'the Rich' DE IVREA and Gisela OF FRIULI) was born in 920; died on 6 Aug 966. [Group Sheet]

1. Rosala OF LOMBARDY died in 1003.
2. Adalbert Margrave OF IVREA was born about 936; died about 974.

Boso married Willa DE BURGUNDY. Willa (daughter of Duke Rudolph OF BURGUNDY) was born in 890; died after 936. [Group Sheet]

Adalbert married Bertha OF LORRAINE. Bertha (daughter of Duke Lothair II OF LOTHARINGIA and Valrade) was born about 863; died on 8 Mar 925. [Group Sheet]

Adalbert married Rothieda DE SPOLETO. [Group Sheet]

Lothair married Valrade. Valrade was born before 850; died after 9 Apr 868. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

mistress during Lothair II's marriage to Teutberga, later his wife

Conrad married Waldrade VAUDRIE. Waldrade was born about 827; died on 9 Apr 868. [Group Sheet]

Lothair married Ermengarde DE HESBAYE. Ermengarde (daughter of Ingerman, Count of HESBAYE) was born about 800 in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France; died on 20 Mar 851 in Abbaye D'Erstein, Strasborg, Alsace-Lorraine, France. [Group Sheet]

Conrad married Adelaide of Tours OF FRANCE. Adelaide (daughter of Emperor Louis I "the Pious" OF FRANCE and Ermentrude DE HESBAYE) was born about 814 in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, France; died about 866. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Louis I was born a twin of Lothair, who died on 8 Feb 779. Louis was crowned King of Quitaine in 781 and remained so until the death of his father in 814, when he became King of France. Following the birth of an illegitimate daughter (Alpais or Elpheid), he married twice and had four sons and two daughters.

Soource:
1. Pedigrees of Some of the Emperor Charlemagne's Descendant's.
2. Ancestral Roots of Sixty Colonists Who Came to New England Between 1623 and 1690, 6th Edition,
Weiss.
3. The Platagenet Ancestry, Moriarty, p. 5.
4. The Platagenet Ancestry, Turton, p. 171.

Louis married Ermentrude DE HESBAYE about 798 in France. Ermentrude was born about 778 in Hesbaye, Leige, Belgium; died on 3 Oct 813 in Angers, Maine-Et-Loire, France. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Charlemagne, in Latin is Carlous Magnus (Charles the Great), King of the Franks (768-814), and Emperor of the Romans (800-814), who led his Frankish armies to victory over numerous other people and established his rule in most of western and central Europe. He was the best-known and most influential king in Europe in the Middle Ages.

Charlemagne, Charles the Great. With the consent of the great nobles, Charlemagne, Charles the Great, became King of France and Holy Roman Emperor of the West from 771 to 814, following the death of his brother. He was born April 2, 742, probably at Aix-La-Chapelle. When only twelve years old we find him commissioned to receive and welcome the pontiff who came to implore his father's aid against the barbarians that threatened Rome. He probably accompanied his father in his campaigns at an early age, but the first time that we really see him in the field, is on the renewal of the war with the rebellious Duke of Aquitaine.

Upon the death of Pepin, in 768, Charlemagne and his younger brother Carloman succeeded to equal portions of one of the most powerful of European kingdoms, bounded by the Pyrenees, the Alps, Mediterranean, and the ocean. But this would hardly enabled the monarchs, even had they been united, to resist successfully the incursions of the barbarous tribes on the German frontiers of France, which had commenced with the first establishment of the Frankish dominion in Gaul; and which were kept alive by the constant pouring forth of fresh hordes from the overpopulated north. The situation of Charlemagne was rendered yet more perilous by the massive enmity of his brother, and the rebellion of Hunald, the turbulent Duke of Aquitaine. But fortunately Charlemagne had a genius equal to the difficulties of his situation; though his brother refused to aid him, he defeated Huald; and no less illustrious by his clemency than by his valor and military skill, he forgave the vanquished rebel.

Desiderius, the King of Lombardy, had made large encroachments upon the states of the Roman Pontiff, whose cause was taken up by Charlemagne. This led to feuds, which Bertha, his mother, endeavored to appease by arranging a marriage between her son and the daughter of the Lombard. But Charlemagne soon took a disgust to the wife thus imposed upon him, and repudiated her, that he might marry Hildegarde, the daughter of a noble family in Swabia. Thus he married Hildegarde of Swabia (Linzgau), Countess, born in 757/758, died April 30, 782/3.

In 771 Carloman died, and Charlemagne was elected to the vacant throne, to the exclusion of his nephews, whose extreme youth made then incapable of wearing the crown in such troubled times. Gilberge, the widow of Carloman, immediately fled, and sought refuse with Desiderius, the common retreat for all who were hostile to the Frankish monarch.

From that time, sole ruler during a reign of forty-three years, he waged incessant wars on all his borders, subduing rebellions, extending his domains and at the same time advancing Christianity. In 772 he began a thirty-year war with the determined Saxons, after the successful opening of Charlemagne was called to the assistance of Pope Hadrian I. against Desiderius, King of the Lombards. Charlemagne marched two armies over the Alps and conquered Lombardy in 774; returned and beat the Saxons again and hastened into Spain, in 778, to help the Arabian rulers of that country against the Osman Caliph of Cordova. It was in this war that Roland, the hero of romance, fell in the pass of Roncesvalles.

In 799 the Romans revolted against Pope Leo III., and were again brought into subjection by Charlemagne. In return, while he was praying on the steps of St. Peter's Church, he was crowned by Leo with the iron crown of the Western Empire, successor of the Roman Caesars, unexpectedly to him, as he pretended, on Christmas Day, 800, amidst the popular acclamations, "Long life and victory to Charles Augustus, crowned by God, great and pacific Emperor of the Romans!"

The extensive domain of Charlemagne was rendered secure only by ceaseless vigilance and warfare. The short intervals of peace which ere allowed him, he employed in endeavoring to educate and civilize his people. He made a tour through his dominions, causing local and general improvement, reforming laws, advancing knowledge, and building churches and monasteries. Christianity being one of the chief means to which he trusted for the attainment of his grand objects. In this he was no less successful than he had before been in war. With exception of the Eastern empire, France was now the most cultivated nation in Europe, even Rome herself sending thither for skillful workmen, while commerce, roads, and mechanics must have been much advanced, as we may infer from the facility with which marble columns and immense stone crosses were often carried through the whole extent of France upon carriages of native construction. Luxury, too, with its attendant arts had made considerable strides. Vases of gold and silver richly carved, silver tables highly wrought, bracelets, rings, and table cloths of fine linen, might be seen in the houses of the nobles. The people must have been dexterous in working iron, for their superiority in this respect is shown by the severe laws forbidding the exportation of arms.

Charlemagne drove back the Arabs, reduced the Huns, and effectually protected his long line of coast from the attempted invasion of the Northmen. It is said, that upon one occasion he arrived at a certain port just as the pirates were preparing to land; but the moment they learned of the presence of the monarch, they immediately fled in great terror at the mere mention of his name.

It was always an object of first importance with Charlemagne to support the papal authority, as holding out the only means of spreading Christianity, which he justly considered the most effectual instrument he could employ to enlighten and civilize the world.

Charlemagne securely laid the foundations of his empire. He was vigilant, judicious, and energetic, both as a ruler and commander. He fostered agriculture, trade, arts, and letters with untiring zeal, clearing forests, draining swamps, founding monasteries and schools, building cities, constructing splendid palaces, as at Aix, Worms, and Ingelheim, and drawing to his court scholars and poets from all nations, being himself proficient in science, as well as all hardy accomplishments.

Charlemagne was tall and a commanding presence, and could speak and write Latin as well as his native German. He fostered all learning and the fine arts, studying rhetoric and astronomy. He reigned over France, half of Germany, and four-fifths of Italy. The Caliph Haroun-al-Rashid sent an embassy to the court of Charlemagne with gifts in token of good will. Attacked with pleurisy he died after a short illness, in the seventy-second year of age, and the forty-seventh of his reign, on January 28, 814. Some years later Charlemagne was canonized by the church.

Charles married Princess Hildegarde OF SAVOY in 771 in Aachen, Rhineland, Germany. Hildegarde (daughter of Duke Gerold I COUNT DE VINGOU and Emma 'Mother of Kings' OF ALLEMAINIA) was born in 758 in Aachen, Rhineland, Germany; died on 30 Apr 783. [Group Sheet]

Notes:

Wife #1 - Hildegard of Savoy. She was 13 when she married Charlemagne, died at age 26 after having 9 children.

Notes:

Pepin (Pippin) II., the Short, King of France from 752 to 768, born in 714, died in 768. He had much to do; the Saxons, Bavarians, and Arabs were all menacing or revolting, and he had to rush from one part of the kingdom to the other, defending its frontiers, and getting no help from the "stupid sluggard king," at Paris. At last, impatient of the farce, he sent this question to the Pope: "Who is king, he who governs or he who wears the crown?" "He who governs, of course," answered the Pope. "That is myself," said the little man with a great will; "so the sluggards shall go to sleep forever," and he sent the last of them, Childeric III., the last of the Merovingians, into a monastery. Then the nobles put their shields together, and the little man was seated on a chair, on their shields, and with him thus, "shouting and raising their shields as high as they could, they marched three times, round the parliament, and then, by St. Boniface, he was anointed Archbishop of Metz, A.D. 752. Pepin did not forget that he owed a debt of gratitude to the Pope for the answer he had given to his question, and when, shortly after, the Pope sent to complain of the trouble occasioned by the Lombards, Pepin crossed the Alps, punished the Lombards, took from them all the territory about Rome and gave it to the Pope "to belong to him and to the bishops of Rome forever. That was the beginning of the Papal sovereignty. The States of the Church, as they were called, remained under the sovereignty of the Popes until 1871." Pepin le Bref, King of France, died in 768. He married Bertha (Bertrada) of Laon. She died in 783.

Pepin married Bartrada DE LEON about 740. Bartrada (daughter of Count Cabaret OF LEON) was born in 720 in Laon (Aisne), France; died on 12 Jul 783. [Group Sheet]

Gerold married Emma 'Mother of Kings' OF ALLEMAINIA. [Group Sheet]