When the negotiations between the king of the Franks and Aistulf led to no result, the Frank army began its march. The Lombards were defeated near Susa, at the foot of Mont Cenis, and presently Pipin stood before Pavia. Thereupon Aistulf consented to peace. He promised to surrender Ravenna, and divers other cities: he bound himself no longer to oppress Rome and her territory. But scarcely was the covenant made, and the Frank host withdrawn, and the Pope returned to Rome, which he entered before the conclusion, having been welcomed in the meadows of Nero by the exulting people, when king Aistulf repented of his concessions. Not only did he not give up a palm of land in the exarchate: he broke again into the Roman territory, took cities, laid waste the country. In this distress wore away the year 755. With New Year’s Day, 756, the king began the siege of Rome. He shut in the city on three sides. On the height of the Janiculum the Tuscans were encamped. Aistulf, with his main force, lay beside the Salarian and neighbouring gates: the Beneventans shut in the southern gates. His attacks upon the walls were repulsed. Every one took part in the struggle. Abbot Warnehar, the Frankish minister, put on armour and worked day and night upon the walls. The whole country round, with its churches, villas, and dwellings, was mercilessly wasted. The Lombards made a desert round Rome. Letter after letter the Pope sent to Pipin. The Father and Head of the Christian family was in the utmost possible danger of beholding the spiritual rights of his see and the people which he loved and cared for, subjected to the half barbarous domination of intruders, who, for nearly two hundred years, had forced themselves upon Italy. In those two centuries the possession of Rome, and lordship over it, had been the coveted prize first of their heathen, and then of their semi-Christian ambition. The rule of the Goth, much nobler in his natural character, and much less savage, had yet failed, even under the genius of Theodorich, to amalgamate itself with Roman thought, law, and usage. The strong hand of the great Gothic king had seemed to tame it: as soon as he was gone, it corrupted his grandson, and murdered his daughter and heiress, Amalasunta, too good and noble for her people. But the prospect of having to submit to an Aistulf, and his ferocious nobles, was worse than the Gothic servitude had been, which yet had subjected the free election of their Father and Pontiff by the Roman clergy and people to a foreign domination. And this domination from Odoacer to Leo III. regarded not the good of the Church, but the ends of Byzantine or Lombard. What, in this day of terror, Pope Stephen wrote to Pipin bears so strongly impressed the inmost belief of his own heart and of the Church at the time that I quote it in part.