At this juncture, the name of Charles Martel blazed through the Christian world, and Gregory III. and the people of Rome implored him to take them under his protection. The Lombards were, however, auxiliaries of Charles, and, as Duchesne suggests, Charles probably resented Gregory's interference in secular affairs; the Pope had recently encouraged the Lombard dukes who were in rebellion against their king, and Liutprand had, in revenge, seized four frontier towns of the Roman duchy. Gregory failed, but his amiable and diplomatic successor, Pope Zachary, changed the Roman policy and made progress. He lent Liutprand the use of the little Papal army to aid in suppressing his dukes, and received the four towns and other "patrimonies." A little later, the Exarch and the Archbishop of Ravenna asked Zachary to intercede for them, and the genial Pope again saw and disarmed the Lombard. The language of the _Liber Pontificalis_ is, at this important stage, so barbarous--a sad reflection of Roman culture, for it must have been written in the Lateran--that one often despairs of catching its exact meaning, but it seems to me clear that it represents Liutprand as giving the district of Cesena to the Papacy, and restoring the exarchate of Ravenna to the city of Ravenna. Presently, however, we shall find the Popes claiming the exarchate. The next step was the famous intervention of Rome in the affairs of the Franks. Pippin, Mayor of the Palace, aspired to the throne of Childeric III., and consulted the Papacy as to the moral aspect of his design. The astute Pontiff went far beyond the terms of the request, and "ordered" the Franks to make Pippin their monarch: an act which founded the lucrative claim of Rome that she had conferred the kingdom on the father of Charlemagne. Zachary's successor, Stephen II.,[114] completed the work. He was hard pressed by the Lombard King Aistulph, and, after a fruitless appeal to Constantinople, he went to France in 753 and implored Pippin to "take up the cause of the Blessed Peter and the Republic of the Romans." This broke the last link with the East, and Stephen secured the gratitude of Pippin and his dynasty by anointing the King and his sons and pronouncing a dire anathema--which he had assuredly no right to pronounce--on any who should ever dare to displace the family of Pippin from the throne. And so Pippin swore a mighty oath that he would take up the cause of the Blessed Peter, but what he precisely engaged to do is one of the great controversies of history.