Another, and what might have been a more important difference between the two partitions, lay in the relation between the brothers. So long as the partnership lasted between the elder Carloman and Pippin they appear to have lived in mutual loyalty and love; but the relation between Charles and the younger Carloman was one of scarcely veiled enmity. Their mother, the good and clever queen Bertrada, did her best to keep the peace between them, but some of Carloman’s friends fanned the flame of discord. Dislike might have broken out into actual civil war but for the opportune death of Carloman, which occurred on the 4th of December 771, after a little more than three years of joint sovereignty. This Carloman is a much less strongly marked figure than his uncle and namesake, and in fact, the quarrel with his far more famous brother, and his marriage to a noble Frankish maiden named Gerberga, are almost the only events in his life that history records. On hearing the tidings of his brother’s death, Charles at once proceeded to the villa of Corbonacus near Soissons which had probably been Carloman’s chief residence, and there, with the consent of Archbishop Wiltchar, of Fulrad, Abbot of St. Denis and royal chaplain, and of some of the nobles of Carloman’s court, he was solemnly proclaimed King of all the Franks. The claims of the two infant sons of Carloman were thus set aside, it would seem, rather by the influence of the great ecclesiastics of the realm than with the hearty consent of the nobles, some of whom shared the exile of the widowed Gerberga, who with her children crossed the Alps and sought shelter at the Court of the King of the Lombards. We may probably discern in this action of Wiltchar and Fulrad somewhat of the same statesmanlike spirit which caused the great Anglo-Saxon churchmen to work for the consolidation of the Heptarchy into one kingdom. None knew better than they the evils which a long minority and protracted dissensions between north and south would bring upon the kingdom, and for the safety of the state they were perhaps justified in encouraging Charles to seize the auspicious moment for reuniting the divided realm. When Charles thus became sole ruler of the Frankish state he was probably a little under thirty years of age. He was a man of commanding presence, more than six feet high, with large and lustrous eyes, a rather long nose, a bright and cheerful countenance and a fine head of hair, which we may suppose to have been now yellow like that of his Teutonic forefathers, though when his biographer Einhard knew him best it had the beautiful whiteness of age.