The career of Charles Martel was now drawing to a close. He was again, in 738, recalled from his operations against the Saxons, by tidings of the invasion of Provence by the Saracens in league with the turbulent Maurontus. For that year the danger was averted by the help of the Lombard king Liutprand, the friend and brother-in-law of Charles. Next year Charles himself invaded Provence with a large army, brought the whole of that beautiful land into real instead of nominal subjection to the Frankish State, and broke the power of Maurontus, who, a hunted fugitive, escaped with difficulty over the craggy cliffs of the Riviera, which are now linked together by the great highway of the Cornice. But, this exploit performed, Charles began to sicken. He was still little more than fifty years of age, but his incessant wars his rapid marches and counter-marches between the German Ocean and the Pyrenees had worn out his strenuous frame. The hammer would strike no more blows for the welding together of the Frankish State. The piteous appeals of Pope Gregory III., who implored his assistance against the Lombard assailants of Rome, fell on unwilling ears. Charles had something else now to do than to cross the Alps and wage war on his friend and kinsman Liutprand, who had been his helper against the Islamites, and to whom he had sent his son Pippin to be adopted as his _filius per arma_, a ceremony similar to the bestowal of knighthood in a later day. In 740 the extraordinary fact is recorded, that no warlike expedition was undertaken by the Franks. The great _major domus_ seems to have been chiefly occupied in arranging for the partition of his territories--they were now without hesitation called his--among his three sons. On the 22d of October, 741, he died at his villa of Quierzy on the Oise, and was buried in that great abbey of St. Denis, which was to receive the corpses of so many sovereigns of his own and other races.