Pippin, the son of Ansegisel, was Mayor of the Palace for twenty-six years (688-714), a period in which he did much to rescue the Frankish realm from the dilapidation and evil governance which it had experienced for the last fifty years. [Sidenote: Dilapidation of the realm.] His first task was to endeavour to restore the ancient boundaries of the kingdom; for during the reigns of the sons and grandsons of Dagobert I., the old limits of the realm had fallen back on every side. On the eastern border the homage which the Bavarian dukes owed to the Merovings had been completely forgotten; for all practical purposes they were now independent. Farther north, the Thuringians were in much the same condition; they had been saved from the Slavonic hordes of Samo by their own chiefs, not by their Frankish suzerain, and since they had repulsed the Slavs had gone on their own way, caring nought who ruled at Metz or Köln. The Frisians of the Rhine-mouth, a race whom the Merovings had never subdued, were pushing their raids into the valleys of the Scheldt and Meuse. These were all comparatively outlying tribes, whose freedom is easily explained by their distance from the centre of government. But it is more surprising to find that even the Suabians or Alamanni, on the very threshold of Austrasia, along the Rhine and Neckar and in the Black Forest, had of late refused the homage which for two hundred years they had been accustomed to render to the Merovings, and paid no obedience to any one save their own local dukes. In the south also the Gallo-Romans of Aquitaine had achieved practical independence under a duke named Eudo, who was said to be descended from Charibert, king of Aquitaine, the brother of Dagobert I. For fifty years Pippin and his son Charles were to work at the restoration of the ancient frontier of the Frankish realm, beating down by constant hard fighting the various vassal tribes who had slipped away from beneath the Frankish yoke. Pippin’s chief wars were with the Frisians and the Suabians, against both of whom he obtained great successes. [Sidenote: Frisia subdued.] After a long struggle he compelled Radbod, the duke of the Frisians, to do homage to king Theuderich, and cede to the Franks West-Frisia, the group of marshy islands between the Scheldt-mouth and the Zuider Zee, which is now called Zealand and South Holland. To protect this new conquest Pippin set up or restored castles at Utrecht and Dorstadt, new towns destined to become, the one the ecclesiastical, and the other the commercial, centre of the lands by the Rhine-mouth. Duke Radbod was also compelled to give his daughter in marriage to Pippin’s eldest son, Grimoald. Another series of campaigns were directed against the Suabians. Pippin followed them into the depths of their forests, and compelled their duke Godfrid to acknowledge himself, as his fathers had done, the vassal of the Franks.