Pepin repaid the Pope by making two excursions into Italy against the Lombards. He took an army to Italy in 754, defeated the Pope's enemies, and compelled them to sign a treaty respecting the rights and territory of the Roman See, but the Franks had scarcely recrossed the Alps before the promises were broken. Pepin, therefore, entered Italy a second time (755), called thither by the famous letter purporting to be from St. Peter himself.[306:1] The Lombard power was effectually broken. The towns and lands of the exarchate and Romagna, claimed by both the Lombards and the eastern Emperor, were given to the Pope.[306:2] This is the famous "Donation of Pepin" by which his envoy laid the conquest of twenty-two cities at the shrine of St. Peter, and thus began the temporal power of the Pope.[306:3] The act of donation is lost.[306:4] The Pope had owned tracts of land all over the Empire before, but now he becomes through this gift a temporal sovereign over a large part of Italy known as the "Patrimony of St. Peter," or the "States of the Church," which continued until 1870, when it was absorbed into the new kingdom of Italy. This act changed the whole later history of the Papacy[306:5] and provoked a long controversy with the secular powers of Europe. Pepin continued to labour to build up the Church in France by restoring confiscated Church property,[306:6] by undertaking needed reforms in discipline and organisation,[306:7] and by giving material assistance and valuable relics to many religious foundations. This alliance between the most powerful representative of the Germanic world and the leader of Roman Christendom in the West was one of the most eventful coalitions in the history of Europe.[307:1] It was the event upon which all mediæval history turned. It created a new political organisation in western Europe with the Pope and German Emperor at the head. For centuries, it affected every institution in western Europe. After Pepin, each new Pope sent a delegation with the key and flag of Rome and the key of St. Peter's tomb to the Frankish rulers for confirmation of the election and to give the king the oath of allegiance. Thus, the strongest western king assumed the same prerogative over the Church which the eastern Emperor had exercised. Pepin's policy was followed by Charles the Great, the German Emperors, the Austrian Emperors, Napoleon the Great, and Napoleon III.