Now at the call of duty, but with his own free consent, Stephen II. crossed the Alps and took refuge in France, to consolidate an alliance with the most potent kingdom of the West, full of importance for that Christendom which the see of St. Peter, and that alone, was creating. As the eastern emperor had nothing for him but to impose heresy and execute tyranny, the king of the Franks, hearing news of his approach, sent a splendid train under his eldest son Charles to convoy him. That was a memorable day when Stephen and Pipin met at the royal villa of Pontigny, near Chalons, on the Marne, not far from the field of battle where Attila three hundred years before failed to make Europe a Mongol empire. Now the union of Stephen and Pipin saved it from a Mohammedan enthralment. The long-suffering loyalty of so many Popes was at length exhausted. The deliverance of the Holy See and their flock from the intolerable Lombard yoke, a usurpation both upon their natural right and their divine commission to rule the people of God, combined with their desertion by the eastern emperor, whom, in despite of the most inhuman government during two hundred years ever practised by men called Christian, they had acknowledged and maintained, led Stephen II. to inaugurate a new political order of things. His request, accompanied with many tears, to Aistulf at Pavia to restore to “the commonwealth” of the empire the exarchate and to forbear grasping Rome, a request which the Lombard cast away in scorn, led the Pope, feeble as he was, to risk all the dangers of the Alpine passes, as well as to seek in France, where alone it could be found, an arm strong enough to save Italy both from Lombard and from Byzantine. The king of the Franks, besides his eldest son Charles, had sent Fulrad the abbot and Rothard the duke to conduct the Pope from the monastery of St. Maurice, whom they brought with all his retinue to the king with great honour. “When,” says Anastasius, “the king heard of the most blessed pontiff’s approach he hastened to meet him with his wife, his sons, and his chief men. Advancing three miles from his palace called Pontigny, he dismounted from his horse, and with great humility threw himself on the earth, together with his wife, his children, and his chieftains, and so received the Pope. He also walked for some space to a certain spot guiding the Pope’s horse.” Then the papal train went on together with the king to the palace, rendering thanks to God in hymns and spiritual songs. It was the feast of the Epiphany, and Pope and king sat side by side in the oratory, when the Pope with tears besought the same most Christian king that by a treaty of peace he would arrange the cause of St. Peter and the commonwealth of the Romans. And the king satisfied the Pope by oath that he would to the utmost listen to all his requirements and restore the exarchate of Ravenna and the other rights and territories of the commonwealth.