Though hostages had been given and solemn oaths sworn for the performance of these conditions, the Lombard king did not keep, perhaps had never intended to keep them. Narni indeed was handed over to the pope, but apparently none of the other cities or lands which Aistulf had promised to restore; and on New Year’s day, 756, he appeared with a large army before the gates of Rome. The men of Tuscany blockaded the gate of St. Peter’s; the Beneventans, the gates of St. Paul and St. John Lateran; while Aistulf himself, like another Alaric, appeared before the Salarian gate and called upon the citizens as they valued their lives, to open the gate and hand over the pontiff to his tender mercies. For nearly two months had the siege lasted when Stephen II. contrived, through the agency of the abbot Warnehar, to make audible to Pippin his piteous cries for help. In the last and most urgent of these letters the pope associates St. Peter with himself, represents the Apostle as praying Pippin to hasten his aid, “lest you should allow this city of Rome to perish in which the Lord has appointed that my body should rest, and which He has commended to my protection and made the foundation of the faith.” This letter is certainly a very daring rhetorical artifice, but it is probable that it was understood to be that and nothing more, both by the sender and the receiver. This time the Frankish king required but little persuasion. The flagrant breach of the treaty made with himself, as well as with the pope, was an insult which called for vengeance. In the spring of 756 he put his army in motion, and after a rapid march by way of Chalons and Geneva he was once more under the snows of Mont Cenis. The Lombard soldiers again failed to prevent his passage over the crest of the pass, and when he had descended into the higher valleys where they were stationed, the Franks, who had evidently among them many trained mountaineers (no doubt from the regions now known as Dauphiné, Savoy, and Switzerland) turned the position of the Lombards by mountain tracks which they had left unguarded, and descending upon them with that _furia Francese_ of which in a later day Italy was to have so many and such fatal examples, slew a multitude of the enemy and put the rest to flight. Again was all the upper valley of the Po devastated by the Frankish troops, and again did Pippin pitch his tents on either side of the Ticino under the walls of Pavia. At the sight thereof, Aistulf, abandoning all hope of successful resistance, obtained the mediation of the nobles and bishops in the invading army, and, imploring pardon for his broken promises, submitted to the conditions, hard as they were, imposed by the conqueror. These were, the surrender to Pippin of one third of the royal hoard stored up through many generations at Pavia, the bestowal of large presents on the nobles of the Frankish court, the payment of long arrears of tribute, and, now at length in very deed,