In this terrible outburst of ambition and crime, which showed but too clearly to what sudden dangers Rome was exposed, the two great officers, Christophorus, the first of the seven Palatine judges, and his son Sergius, had done their utmost to prevent the usurpation, and in the end delivered the Holy See from the intruder Constantine. Desiderius had taken no part in the intrusion of the anti-pope. He even assisted Christophorus and Sergius in removing him. But in doing this a Lombard priest, Waldepert, sought to set up another anti-pope, and lost his life. After the due appointment of Stephen III., the master stroke of the Lombard king’s policy was to sever, if he could, the two Frank kings from friendship with the Holy See, and so sooner or later to get possession of Rome. He proposed in 770 a double marriage; on one side the marriage of his daughter Desiderata or Ermengarde either with Charles or with Carloman; on the other that of their sister, the princess Gisela, with his son Adelchis. The queen mother, Bertrada, set her hand to accomplish the first. There is a most earnest letter from Pope Stephen III. to the kings Charles and Carloman, entreating them not to stain the noble Frank race, the most eminent of all, by a connection with the faithless and perfidious Lombard. “You have likewise,” he said, “by the will of God, and the command of your father, contracted lawful marriages with excellent royal ladies out of your own people, conspicuous for their nobility and beauty. It is not lawful for you to repudiate them. To take other wives would be an impiety. Heathens only can so act. Forget not, most illustrious sons, that you received holy unction from St. Peter’s successor, that your father of glorious memory listened to the injunctions of our predecessor Stephen, and forebore to separate from your mother, Bertrada, and be mindful of your repeated promise to St. Peter and his successor that you would ever be friends of our friends and enemies of our enemies. Would you now bind yourselves to our enemies? For the faithless people of the Lombards, which ceases not to attack the Church of God, and make incursions on our province of Rome, is our manifest enemy.”(230)