Irene’s five years of power (797-802) were disastrous at home and abroad. Her court was swayed by two greedy eunuchs, Aetius and Stauracius, on whom she lavished all the highest offices. Their miserable quarrels with each other are the chief things recorded in the annals of her internal government. Meanwhile the frontiers were overrun by the armies of Haroun-al-Raschid. The Saracens harried the Anatolic and Thracesian themes, and forced their way as far as Ephesus. Peace was only granted when Irene consented to pay a large annual tribute to the Caliph. [Sidenote: Deposition of Irene, 802.] In 802 the cup of Irene’s iniquities was full. To put an end to anarchy abroad and within, a number of the chief officers of State, headed by the treasurer Nicephorus, seized her by night, and shut her up in a nunnery. No one struck a blow in her defence, for she was loved by no one, not even by the Iconodules, for whom she had done so much. Nicephorus was proclaimed as her successor, and ascended the throne without any disturbance. Thus ended the house of the Isaurians, after eighty-five years of rule. They had effected much for the empire; for the disasters of Irene’s short reign had not sufficed to undo the solid work of Leo III. and Constantine V. The boundaries were safer, the population greater, the wealth largely increased, the armies more efficient than at the commencement of the century. Even the Iconoclastic persecutions, though they had failed to crush superstition, had done some good in rooting out the grosser vagaries of image-worship. The Iconoclastic party still subsisted, and was strong in the army and civil service; we shall see it once more in power during the ninth century. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIX PIPPIN THE SHORT—WARS OF THE FRANKS AND LOMBARDS 741-768 Mayoralty of Pippin and Carloman—Their successful wars—Boniface reforms the Frankish church—Abdication of Carloman—Pippin dethrones Childebert III. and assumes the royal title—Quarrel of Aistulf and Pope Stephen—The Pope calls the Franks into Italy—Pippin twice subdues Aistulf—The Exarchate given to the Papacy—Martyrdom of St. Boniface—Conquest of Narbonne—Long struggle with the dukes of Aquitaine—Death of Pippin.