Carolingian Empire

On 4 April 801, Louis the Pious captured Barcelona after a seven-month winter siege. History would remember him as the weeping, penitent emperor who let the Carolingian Empire fall apart. On this morning he was twenty-two, and had just done something his father never managed.

On 2nd April 747, Charlemagne was born. He would build an empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Elbe. His heirs would spend thirty years tearing it apart. The pieces became France and Germany.