[Sidenote: Rise of Charles Martel.] Before the end of the year, however, two important events occurred to give a new turn to the war. Charles, the son of Pippin, escaped from his stepmother’s prison, and was at once saluted as chief by the majority of the Austrasians, who had been driven to wild rage by the ravages of the Neustrian army, and yearned for a leader capable of commanding in the field. Shortly after the young king, whom East and West had both acknowledged, died, as did all his ancestors, just when he had attained manhood, and immediately after the birth of his first child. Like the Grand Lamas of Thibet, these wretched Merovings expired, with hardly an exception, just as they grew old enough to interfere in politics. As with the Lamas, so with the Franks, we cannot help suspecting that there was more in these sudden deaths than appears on the surface: it certainly was not to the interest of those about the persons of the kings that they should ever live long enough to assert their regal power. On the death of Dagobert, the Neustrians drew out from the monastery, where he had been placed in earliest infancy, the son of Childerich I., the king whom Bodolin had slain in 678. [Sidenote: Chilperich II., 716.] The monk Daniel was saluted by the royal name of Chilperich, and raised on the shield: he was the first Meroving for eighty years who had reached manhood at the moment of his accession, being in his thirty-eighth year. Chilperich, in spite of his monastic rearing—or perhaps in virtue of it—turned out a far more vigorous personage than any of his relatives, and cannot be called one of the ‘_rois fainéants_.’ He continually took the field at the head of his Neustrians, and did his best to become their national champion. Unfortunately the times were against him. In 716 the Neustrian king and mayor marched together into Austrasia to make an end of the resistance alike of Plectrudis and of Charles. At the same time Radbod, the Frisian duke, pushed up the Rhine towards Köln. Charles offered battle to the invaders near that city, but was defeated, and forced to take refuge in the mountains of the Eifel. Chilperich then laid siege to Köln, and compelled Plectrudis and her party to acknowledge him as king, give up the royal treasure-hoard of Austrasia, and withdraw the boy Theudoald’s claim to the mayoralty. But while the Neustrian army was returning in triumph to its own land, Charles, who had assembled a new force, fell upon it near Malmédy, on the skirts of the Ardennes. At the battle of Amblève all the work of Chilperich’s vigorous campaign was undone, for his army was routed, and he and his mayor, Raginfred, barely escaped with their lives (716).