Chaos and misery followed the brilliant reign of Dagobert. In half a century his race had faded into the feeble _rois fainéants_, degenerate by precocious debauchery, some of whom were fathers at fourteen or fifteen years of age and in their graves before they were thirty.[26] In an age when human passions are untamed, the one unpardonable vice in a king is weakness, and soon the incapable, impotent and irresolute Merovingians were thrust aside by a more puissant race. CHAPTER III THE CARLOVINGIANS--THE GREAT SIEGE OF PARIS BY THE NORMANS--THE GERMS OF FEUDALISM At the head of the establishment of every Merovingian chief was his mayor, or major domus, who administered his domains and acted as deputy when his master was non-resident or away at the wars. A similar official of the king's household, the mayor of the palace, likewise presided over the royal council and tribunal in the absence or during the minority of the king. In 622, when Dagobert became king of Austrasia, one Pepin of Landen, known as Pepin le Vieux, was made mayor of the palace and, associated with St. Arnoulf, bishop of Metz, was appointed ward of the young king. A marriage between Pepin's daughter and the son of St. Arnoulf resulted in the birth of Pepin of Heristal, who in the anarchy that followed on Dagobert's death succeeded in crushing Ebroin,[27] the king-maker, mayor of the palace of Neustria. Pepin then seized the royal treasury, installed Thierry III. as king of the Franks and himself as mayor of the palace. Pepin's successor, for the office of mayor had now become hereditary, was Charles Martel, his son by Alfaide, a fair and noble concubine. He it was, who by his valour and address saved Western Europe from the Mussulman at Tours, and made glorious his name in Christendom. At his death, when crossing the Alps to defend the Pope against the Arian Lombards, the leadership of the Franks passed to his sons Carloman and Pepin the Short, of whom the latter, on his brother's retirement to the cloister at the famous Italian Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino, held undivided sway.