So I don’t mind Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989, dir. Steven Spielberg). It’s a pretty fun movie that captures some of the spirit of the first movie and avoids everything that’s awful about the second one. But there is one brief moment in it that drives me crazy, like a raspberry seed between my teeth.
Partway through the film, Indiana (Harrison Ford) and his father Henry (Sean Connery) are trying to escape from some Nazi airplanes in a car. The car gets bombed and they’re trapped on a beach with a bunch of birds. Daddy Jones suddenly charges at a bunch of sea gulls flapping his umbrella. The startled gulls take off and the airplane flies through them and crashes. And then Henry says “I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne. ‘Let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds of the sky.’ “
Here’s the scene, if you need a reminder. The quote comes at the 1:45 mark.
What I hate about this scene is that the quote is entirely made up. It doesn’t derive from any actual source about Charlemagne. Jones Senior talks about “my Charlemagne” implying that he has studied Charlemagne’s writings, the way one might talk about “my Vergil” or “my Chaucer”.
But Charlemagne never wrote anything. It’s not just a case that nothing he wrote has survived, he actually didn’t write any texts because we know from his main biographer Einhard although Charlemagne tried to learn to write as an adult, he was never able to do so. To quote Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne, “He also tried to write, and used to keep tablets and blanks in bed under his pillow, that at leisure hours he might accustom his hand to form the letters; however, as he did not begin his efforts in due season, but late in life, they met with ill success.” Charlemagne was a smart guy and quite learned in some subjects, thanks to the intellectuals at his court, but he never acquired the ability to write.
We do have the text of laws and letters written in his name, but it’s unlikely that he directly composed much of that, although in some cases a scribe might have taken dictation from him. But even so, his writing isn’t given to flights of poetry like talking about rocks and trees and birds as his armies.
A bust of Charlemagne
Charlemagne was quite a conqueror. He ruled France (more or less) from 768 to 814, and in that period he waged war on a nearly annual basis, conquering what is today western Germany, northeastern Spain, and northern Italy and subjugating much of the rest of central Europe. This wasn’t a guy who going to wax poetic about nature being his armies, because he needed actual armies with real man fighting for him.
And what the hell is this quote even supposed to mean? How are rocks and trees and birds supposed to fight for a king? What metaphorical battle would nature fight for someone, the battle of boredom? It sounds kinda Franciscan-spiritual until you actually try to pin it down, and then you realize it’s just a dumb thing to say.
Now if this was just some toss-away line from a movie that no one ever talks about it wouldn’t be such a problem. But if you google the line, you’ll find it all over the Internet. People are making inspirational posters out of it!
Here, let me show you.
But he didn’t say this!
It’s just a made-up quote!
No! Stop making these!
Why are you doing this? It’s not even a good quote!
My life is a failure.
Aaaagh! And that’s just a small selection of the damn things!
This is why there’s no such thing as “just a movie”. Because people out there who know nothing about the Middle Ages are prone to getting their faux-inspirational quotes from action films.
Sob!
Want to Know More?
There really isn’t anything more to know here. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is available on Amazon.
Instead of getting your knowledge about Charlemagne from action films, consider reading Two Lives of Charlemagne, by Einhard and Notker the Stammerer. These two biographies are quite short.
An Historian Goes to the Movies 
All that some know of history comes directly from the movies — including science fiction movies. What did someone once say? “Never let facts get in the way of a good story”?
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This had me wheezing, and it’s one of my favorite movies. Thank you!
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I’m glad you enjoyed it!
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I absolutely love this post, and that is hilarious that so many people latch onto it as an inspirational quote. I did not know that wasn’t a real quote either, and I admit I have even used it every now and then (usually when something runs away in front of me).. But so absolutely true about movies affecting people’s perception of history, etc.
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Now my life is just a little bit less of a failure! Thank you.
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Agree with this. And I have to admit that I thought this was a real quote. Many thanks for this very informative post and yet again another example of how people take away things from movies and TV programmes as gospel truth.
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Is this the one where Indy has to make his way through the cavern of the Grail by stepping on stones to spell out “Jehovah” in exactly that 17th-century orthography and alphabet?
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Yes. I did g say there weren’t other problems with the film. I’ve just been wanting to get this bit off my chest for a while.
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I don’t doubt that the quote is fake and does not sound like something a real military leader like Charlemagne would say. However, it occurs to me that – theoretically – Jones Sr. could say “my Charlemagne” when he really means a contemporaneous biography of Charlemagne reporting something he said, rather than a book Charlemagne wrote.
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I…suppose? Usually that construction is a shorthand for ‘my knowledge of that author/text’, so Jones Sr would be expressing your idea very oddly. Also, he’s a professor of medieval literature, so it’s hard to see why he would have written a book about Charlemagne, who wasn’t an author. I suppose he could be referencing the Matter of France, a collection of chansons du geste that sometimes include Charlemagne as a character.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_of_France
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Considering that this is part of a series of films that made up: a location for the Ark of the Covenant, a set of stones for the Hindu God Shiva, and actual ancient astronauts in South America. A quote from a fake book on Charlemagne seems par for the course.
I also always figured Henry Sr. was quoting a book someone else wrote that ascribed the saying to Charlemagne. So the question is, does this sound like something Charlemagne would have said?
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No. It sounds nothing like something a serious general would say. What the hell does this quote even mean?
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If I had to guess I would say the quote means that the speaker of it wants to be one with the land his rules so that even nature is at his command. Sounds like something out of John Boorman’s EXCALIBUR (1981).
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Yeah, that’s totally not Charlemagne.
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I assumed the original scene went
HENRY: I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne. ‘I think you have found out that it is not lack of self-restraint but care for others which makes me dine in Lent before the hour of evening.’
INDY LOOKS CONFUSED
HENRY: I’m asking if you want to get dinner now even though its early. You look hungry, son.
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Because of his accent, I was convinced he was saying “Shallomy” or something like that, who, as a teen, I assumed was some philosopher prone to saying airy things like that.
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That makes as much sense as what he actually says.
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If I remember my Shalimar…
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Lord, let me be dancing in my sheets.
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LOL! Reminds me of the fake Abraham Lincoln quote in “Pollyanna”.
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“We charged upon a flock of geese and put them all to flight.” – McGuffy, William Holmes. 1879. Ed. Bartlett, John. Familiar Quotations. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1939. Print. – Page 952.
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The misquote is the joke. It can be interpreted through Indy’s reaction that he realized it but decided not to say anything so he didn’t ruin the moment. Maybe take message from that..
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That’s quite clearly not what’s happening in that scene. There is no indication that the quote is fake–how would a 20th century audience know what Charlemagne did or didn’t say unless the film had at some point established the truth of the matter, which is doesn’t. Indy isn’t staring at his father because he’s screwed something up. He’s staring at his father because he’s seeing his father in a new light and perhaps acknowledging his father’s sangfroid.
And regardless of what’s happening in the movie, the movie’s made-up quote (not a misquote–there’s nothing to misquote) has shaped ideas about Charlemagne in a rather nonsensical fashion.
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I always took it to mean a good general uses natural phenomena to their advantage. Not much different than how the landscape played into famous battles like Gettysburg or Antietam. Or how fog impacted D Day.
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“You’re a piece of shit.”- Me, replying the twat that wrote this.
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Ah, yes, the great internet delusion that the unsupported opinion of some rando in the internet’s opinion actually matters to an expert in the field under discussion. I’m as devastated by your derision as I was when Becky Treichel told me I was fat in the 5th grade.
Now if you care to offer some actual reasons why you disagree with my analysis, I’ll be glad to talk. But ad hominem attacks by total strangers interest me not at all.
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I know buddy I know, there are so many quotes out there that were never said by the people who are credited with them. Films are fiction, and this one at least had the gusto to make an academic a hero, unlike all the other terrible films out there.
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Both he and Indy are tweedy in their own ways, which I think is a very nice touch. It’s one of the reasons the original plays as well as it does.
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Yes, please, Many are very fiction!
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That quote actually makes no sense at all. But then neither do the Indiana Jones movies 😁
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He killed like a million birds in the scene, so I guess Henry should have said save your bullets son, I’ll down this plane with a million flying rodents.
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No, no, you got it all wrong. Clearly he’s extemporizing when he’s talking about the birds and such.
The actual Charlemagne quote is earlier in the scene:
“Duuuuk duk duk duk duuk duk, duuuuuk duk duuk duk duk duk duk, duuk duk duuuuk duk duuuk duk duk duk, duuuuk duk duk duuk, chuuuuuk chuk chuk chuk duk duuuuuk”
So maybe not the most impressive quote in today’s context, but not bad for an old illiterate French dude.
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…just buy & watch the movie & nobody gets hurt.. can be a saying, too!
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