Amid all these fatigues and battles, which might appear sufficient to have occupied the attention of any one man, Charlemagne retained in his own hands the general government of the state. The local administration was distributed among twelve provincial officers, with the title of Dukes, each of them having the command of a county. Subordinate to these officers were the Counts, who, in fact, were the judges of the land, and had full authority to decide and punish within their jurisdiction. To secure the faithful performance of their duties by these Dukes and Counts, certain officers, under the name of Missi Dominici, were sent in visitations from time to time to inquire into their conduct. In great ecclesiastical questions, or those affecting the more powerful vassals of the crown, either the king himself, or the count of his palace, sat as judge. Spain next demanded his attention. That country had been subdued by the Arabs, but the descendants of the first conquerors quarrelled among themselves, and Ibn al Arabi, a powerful chief, sought aid of Charlemagne, who marched thither, and being, as usual, victorious, secured to himself a barrier against the Saracens and Gascons. This was seen with ill-will by Lupo, Duke of Gascony, who when the Frankish king was leaving Spain to meet fresh dangers on the Rhine, treacherously laid an ambush for his destruction in the gorges of the Pyrenees. The monarch himself was allowed to pass with the first division of his army, the second was assailed and destroyed in the valley of Roncesvalles, and the conquerors secreting themselves in their mountain fastnesses, presented no object for the vengeance of the indignant monarch. Besides, the barbarians were again ravaging his frontiers, under the command of Witikind, with a fierceness that went far beyond even the worst of their earlier incursions. Their cruelty, however, was retaliated by their almost total annihilation while attempting to retreat across the Adern, and in the ensuing season Charlemagne reduced them, as it seemed, to a state of total submission. But no sooner had he set out for Italy, whither he was called by many pressing affairs, than Witikind, the great leader of the Westphalians, started forth from his retreat in Denmark and stimulated all Saxony to a renewed contest. The time was well chosen. Witikind, who appears to have been as superior to the generals of Charlemagne as he was inferior to the king himself, gave the Franks a complete overthrow. [Illustration: Charlemagne at Witikind's baptism.]