The actual alliance of the Pope with the Franks was consummated with Pepin the Short. The occasion for the compact was the Iconoclastic Controversy in the East, and the change of dynasty in the West. Pepin the Short accepted what Charles Martel had refused. He ruled Neustria, while Carloman, his brother, ruled Austrasia (741-747). When Carloman became a monk (747), Pepin was left as the sole ruler of all France, but still under a phantom Merovingian king. In 751, with the consent of the Franks in their annual assembly, two churchmen were sent to Rome to ask Pope Zacharias, acting in the capacity of an international arbiter, whether the real king ought not to take the name of king. The Pope answered in the affirmative, and thus authorised the usurpation.[304:2] Thus a new prerogative of the Holy See came into active existence. The next year the assembly of Soissons elected Pepin and his wife King and Queen of France. Childeric III., the Merovingian weakling, was shorn of both his royal hair and his royal crown, and shut up in a monastery. Boniface in all probability then anointed the head appointed by the Pope to wear the French crown.[305:1] Through this alliance, the Pope expected to make the declaration of independence from the eastern Empire good, to increase and extend papal power in the West, to establish a precedent for deposing and enthroning kings--a significant thing for the future,--and to gain material help against the Arian Lombards who were threatening Rome.[305:2] In 753, Pope Stephen II., who succeeded Zacharias (752), fled to France from the Lombards to implore aid from Pepin against them. In sack-cloth and ashes, he threw himself at the King's feet and would not rise until his petition was granted.[305:3] The Pope himself now solemnly anointed Pepin and his family with royal power, at St. Denis, and made him and his two sons patricians of Rome.[305:4] After that Pepin called himself "by the grace of God, King of the Franks."