Desiderius

For the vacant throne, two claimants appeared.

One of these was a powerful Lombard lord, Desiderius, Duke of Tuscany, a favourite of the late king, but apparently a man of humble birth.

The other was Ratkes, who after seven years of monastic life at Monte

Cassino, suddenly escaped to Pavia, and there for three months ruled as king.

abler leader who threw himself wholly into the policy of alliance with the franks and hostility to the lombards from that moment the doom of the lombard kingdom was certain the special purpose of desiderius was to sow dissension between charles and the pope by inducing hadrian to crown the two little sons of carloman in this he was supported by a lombard party among the papal advisers

and when the pope discovered a treasonable correspondence going on between his chamberlain a fiarta and desiderius and had his officer arrested and executed the lombard king set out for rome where he might have succeeded in deposing the pope and setting up a rival in his own interest but under threat of excommunication he hesitated at the frontier and finally turned back Meanwhile, Hadrian sent in hot haste to Charles, appealing to him for help.

Charles appears to have tried to avoid a final breach with the Lombard king, and sent commissioners to investigate the causes of quarrel between Hadrian and Desiderius.

But when Desiderius refused all recognition of the claims of the pope to the cities that he had seized in the Exarchate, Charles found himself obliged to act.

A brief interval of peace with the Lombards had been succeeded by the old traditional hostility.

In the pontificate of Hadrian I, 772 to 795, Rome was again threatened by the Lombard king Desiderius, and once more a passionate cry for help was made to the king of the Franks.

Charles crossed the Alps with a powerful force.

Pavia was taken after an obstinate resistance.

Desiderius vanished into a monastery, the native line of Lombard kings came to an end, and northern Italy became a part of the Frankish dominions.

The pope, the Roman clergy, the senate, the nobles, and the people hailed Charles as a deliverer.

He was embraced by the pope on the steps of St. Peter's, he devoutly attended the ceremonies of Holy Week, and at the close he solemnly ratified the donation made by his father Pippin.

Hildebrand asked and obtained immediate protection for Nicholas.

The conditions were accepted, and each entered into the possession of the share of the kingdom that fell to him by this arrangement, but peace was only maintained between them with the greatest difficulty, because many of Carloman's party kept trying to disturb their good understanding, and there were some even to plotted to involve them in a war with each other.

The event, however, which showed the danger to have been rather imaginary than real, for at Carloman's death his widow, Gerberga, fled to Italy with her sons and her principal inherents, and without reason, despite her husband's brother, put herself and her children under the protection of Desiderius, king of the Lombards.

Carloman had succumbed to disease after ruling two years, in fact more than three, in common with his brother, and at his death Charles was unanimously elected king of the Franks.

Chapter 4 Plan of this work It would be folly, I think, to write a word concerning Charles' birth and infancy, or even his boyhood, for nothing has ever been written on the subject, and there is no one alive now who can give information on it.

Now, although Charles seems to have had similar, or rather just the same grounds for declaring war that his father had, the war itself differed from the preceding one alike in its difficulties and its issue.

Pepin, to be sure, after besieging King Astolph a few days in Pavia, had compelled him to give hostages, to restore to the Romans the cities and castles that he had taken, and to make oath that he would not attempt to seize them again.

But Charles did not cease, after declaring war, until he had exhausted King Desiderius by a long siege, 773, and forced him to surrender at discretion, driven his son Adalgis, the last hope of the Lombards, not only from his kingdom, but from all Italy, 774, restored to the Romans all that they had lost, subdued Rodgaus, Duke of Freely, 776, who was plotting revolution, reduced all Italy to his power, and set his son Pepin as king over it, 781.

At this point I should describe Charles' difficult passage over the Alps into Italy, and the hardships that the Franks endured in climbing the trackless mountain ridges, the heaven-aspiring cliffs and ragged peaks, if it were not my purpose in this work to record the manner of his life rather than the incidents of the wars that he waged.

A new wave of invaders, the Lombards, was waiting in the wings.

They were a fierce Germanic people who had been pushed from their traditional lands and were looking for a new home.

The war-torn and exhausted state of Italy made it an inviting target, a country with little will or strength left to resist.

The slow unraveling was about to get a lot faster.

The popes, who had once been the most powerful political figures in Italy, were now finding that their power was also a kind of a fragile thing.

They were being pulled in different directions by the great powers of Europe.

They would ally with France one day and with Spain the next, and they would always be looking over their shoulders, wondering which of the great powers was going to turn on them next.

The age of the Renaissance popes, with their immense power and their immense wealth, was coming to an end.