A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 1Guizot, François
History
A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 1
Guizot, François
France -- History
dominions, as it would wound the pride of the conquered people to be thus
absorbed by the conquerors, and to take merely the title of “King of the
Franks and Lombards.” Charlemagne appreciated and accepted this wise
advice; for he could preserve proper limits in his ambition and in the
hour of victory. Three years afterwards he even did more than Pope
Adrian had advised. In 777 Queen Hildegarde bore him a son, Pepin, whom
in 781 Charlemagne had baptized and anointed king of Italy at Rome by the
Pope, thus separating not only the two titles, but also the two kingdoms,
and restoring to the Lombards a national existence, feeling quite sure
that, so long as he lived, the unity of his different dominions would not
be imperilled. Having thus regulated at Rome his own affairs and those
of the Church, he returned to his camp, took Pavia, received the
submission of all the Lombard dukes and counts, save one only, Aregisius,
duke of Beneventum, and entered France again, taking with him as prisoner
King Didier, whom he banished to a monastery, first at Liege and then at
Corbie, where the dethroned Lombard, say the chroniclers, ended his days
in saintly fashion.
The prompt success of this war in Italy, undertaken at the appeal of the
Head of the Church, this first sojourn of Charlemagne at Rome, the
spectacles he had witnessed, and the homage he had received, exercised
over him, his plans, and his deeds, a powerful influence. This rough
Frankish warrior, chief of a people who were beginning to make a
brilliant appearance upon the stage of the world, and issue himself
of a new line, had a taste for what was grand, splendid, ancient, and
consecrated by time and public respect; he understood and estimated at
its full worth the moral force and importance of such allies. He
departed from Rome in 774, more determined than ever to subdue Saxony, to
the advantage of the Church as well as of his own power, and to promote,
in the South as in the North, the triumph of the Frankish Christian
dominion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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