curses of the Frankish invasion, of its long and unnatural connection with the Western Empire, and of that still greater disaster, the permanent establishment of the temporal power of the papacy. Charles Martel did not accept Gregory’s offers, or carry out the Pope’s plans: he would not quarrel with his old friend Liutprand on such inadequate grounds as the Pope alleged. He chose instead to endeavour to mediate between Gregory and the Lombard king. He accepted the title of Patrician, and received the Roman ambassadors with great pomp and honour, sending them home with many rich presents. But his own delegates who accompanied them were charged to reconcile the Pope and the king, not to promise aid to the one against the other. Both Charles and Gregory, as it happened, were at this moment on the edge of the grave: both died in the next year (741), and it was some time before the first active interference of the Franks in behalf of the papacy was destined to take place. How uncalled for was the action of pope Gregory is shown by the fact that in the next year Liutprand came to terms with the Roman See. [Sidenote: Liutprand grants peace to the Pope, 742.] On the accession of pope Zachariah, who promised to give no more aid to the rebel duke of Spoleto, Liutprand restored the cities he had taken from the Roman duchy, and granted a peace for twenty years. He even presented great offerings to the Roman Churches and made a present of some valuable estates to Zachariah. Yet the anger of the popes was in no way appeased: in their hearts they hated the Lombards as if they were still Arians or heathen, and only awaited another opportunity for conspiring against them. Meanwhile Liutprand died in peace in 743, after a reign of thirty-one years, in which he had added the greater part of the Exarchate to his kingdom, had extended the boundaries of Italy to north and east against the Bavarian and Slav, and had reduced the Beneventan and Spoletan dukes to an unwonted state of subservience. No one, save his enemies the popes, ever laid a charge of any sort against his character, and he appears to have been the best-loved and best-served king of his day. We read with pleasure that he died in peace, ere the terrible invasion of the Franks began to afflict the land he had guarded so well. It would have been better perhaps for Italy if he had been a less virtuous and pious sovereign: a less temperate ruler would have finished his career of conquest by taking Rome, and so would have staved off the countless ills that Rome was about to bring on the whole Italian peninsula. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XVII CHARLES MARTEL AND HIS WARS 720-41