962-1356 CE
From 962 to 1356 CE, the Teutons pursued the impossible dream of universal empire — Germanic kings crowned in Rome as heirs to Charlemagne and Caesar, their armored knights crossing the Alps again and again to impose imperial will on rebellious Italian cities. Yet the struggle with popes and princes bled the empire's strength, leaving behind a patchwork of principalities united only by the fiction of Roman continuity.