Little by little the Merovings broke away from their racial Belgic affiliations, Soissons became the capital rather than Tournai, and at last by a dramatic turn of fate another Belgian race brought the decrepit line to its term and founded a new and a nobler house. Pepin of Landen, in the province of Liége, became mayor of the palace and the active influence in royal affairs, somewhere about the year 620, and it was a son of his daughter, Pepin of Herstel (a town also in the province of Liége) who was father of Charles Martel, who in his turn was the grandfather of Charlemagne. As the Huns and the Allemanni had been rolled back from their savage incursions by the aid of men of Belgic nationality, so now the greater threat of an onrushing Mohammedanism was to be dispelled by another and a greater personality, Charles the Hammer, a soldier of consummate ability, the real ruler of all the Franks, and the victor at the battle of Tours when final decision was reached as to whether Europe was for the future to be Moslem or Christian. Charles Martel died when only fifty years of age, and his son Pepin succeeded him as mayor of the palace. The fiction of Meroving kingship could no longer be maintained; the stock was hopelessly degenerate; the people demanded an end, the Pope sanctioned it, and so, after a most orderly fashion Childeric III betook himself to a convenient cloister, Pepin was raised on the shields of the Gallic soldiers, then decently crowned in St. Denis, and the dynasty of the Carolings began. For sixteen years he reigned as kings had not been wont to reign for many centuries; Saxony, Brittany, Languedoc were added to the Frankish dominions, Rome twice saved from the Lombard invaders, and the Papacy made the faithful ally and defender of the Frankish kingdom, then the one great power in Europe.