masse_ after the surrender, and the great city was re-populated with ‘Goths’ from Septimania. The Franks were now firmly established beyond the Pyrenees, and in the last ten years of Charles’s reign subdued the whole southern slope of the mountains from Pampeluna as far as the mouth of the Ebro. Tarragona, the second town of Catalonia, fell in 809, and Tortosa, the great fortress which commanded the lower course of the Ebro, in 811. After this the Franks were able to cross the river, and ravage the wide plains of Valencia; it was probably their advance in this direction that induced Al-Hakem, the third Ommeyad ruler of Cordova, to sue for peace in 812, ceding to the Christians all that they had gained beyond the Pyrenees. The Franks were not destined to hold permanently the entirety of their conquests, but Barcelona and all the towns north of it were lost to Islam and won for Christendom: these strongholds guarded the Aquitanian frontier against Saracen inroads with success, and were ultimately to form the nucleus of the more important half of the Christian kingdom of Arragon. Such were the foreign conquests of Charles the Great. But his offensive campaigns were not the only wars in which blood was shed during the later years of his reign. There were also troubles, though of comparatively insignificant scope, within the interior of his realm. We have already alluded to two fruitless attempts of the Bretons of Armorica to resume their ancient independence. These were easily crushed, but not so the later Saxon rebellions. [Sidenote: Later Saxon revolts.] It was seven years after the pacification of 785 before the unruly dwellers by the Elbe and Weser rose again, but in the eighth summer some of the districts of the extreme north took arms again and relapsed into their ancestral heathendom, ‘returning like the dog to his vomit,’ in the words of the contemporary chronicler. The insurrection spread widely among the Eastphalians and Nordalbingians in the following year (793), and was not finally put down till 794, though it never extended over the whole land, as did the great risings of the early part of the reign of Charles. Ere two years more were passed there were new troubles among the Engrians and Nordalbingians, which required the presence of Charles: but it says much for the growing strength of his power in the country that he was able to suppress them by means of armies composed partly of Christian Saxons, and partly of the loyal Slavs of the Abotrite tribe. The last outbreak in the land was as late as 804: it extended only over the northern tribes, and was suppressed by the summary transportation to Gaul of the whole of the unruly Nordalbingian race, the greatest offenders among the rebels. Charles settled 10,000 of their families in small colonies among the Neustrians, and gave their vacant lands as a gift to his vassal, the king of the Abotrites. This was the last Saxon rebellion: henceforth ‘they abandoned