first of all, bigbaby, maybe you ought to study your mideval history before you start making such halfassed comments. charlemange never got within 500 miles of any of the countries you mentioned, much less conquered them. and eagle scout, i think you need a history lesson too. the franks where indeed the ancestors of the modern french, as the gallic (read: celtic) peoples of france/gaul where pushed into brittany and had little influence on france's genepool after the frankish ascendency. the franks became settled in gaul between 480 and 511 ad and have been the dominant race in the region ever since. anyways charlemange was a compatent military leader, he conquered the lombards at the behest of the pope in 776 (as a result of his lombard vistories and his giving the church large land grants, he was crowned the first holy roman emperor) and destroyed the avar khanate on the pannonian plains (hungary) in 793,he defeated the muslim arabs/berbers at tarragona in spain in 806, he was responsible for the first mideval navy in western europe (formed in 809 to combat the new viking threat to the coasts of flanders & the english channel coastline) all in all ill give him 4 stars for unifying most of western europe

Leader of the First Reich. I do not want to dispute his military genius, I just think it is funny how the French always try to claim him. While he may have been called a Frank this did not make him French. The Franks were what we would consider German today, if you need proof just look up the Frankish language. The group that the French are truly the closest to was the Guals, who lost to both the Romans and the Franks. The French language got started because while they were under Roman rule they tried to learn Latin but couldn't speak it correctly. The Franks on the other hand were not under Roman control, in fact under Charlemagne they took what was left of the western Roman Empire and made himself Emporer. The Franks were awesome and their greatest leader was Charlemagne, I guess that shows that he was...pretty great and awesome. This sor of marked a pattern in history. The French (Gauls) had a tendency to be conquered, and the German nations had a tendency to be strong. Wow, they stayed that way up until the last part of the last century.

It takes someone with lots of military skill to conquer Greece, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey, and parts of both Egypt and Saudi Arabia. He was in control of an empire almost as large as the Roman Empire. And he's only worth 3 stars?