The new line of Frankish rulers had apparently learned nothing from the vicissitudes of the elder house. At the death of Charles Martel, the division of the kingdom between his two sons would have certainly endangered the sovereignty of his family had not the difficulty been averted by the abdication of Carloman the elder. Yet Pippin, on his deathbed, had not scrupled to make the same blunder of dividing the realm between his two sons, Charles and Carloman. Almost immediately after their father’s death the heirs, apparently mutually suspicious, separated from each other, and had themselves separately proclaimed kings by the Frankish nobles, and received anointment at the hands of the bishops, Charles at Noyon, Carloman at Soissons. The diplomacy of the dead ruler was revealed in the kind of disposal he made of his realm. It was an equal division only on paper; for the arrangement of the shares was such that the elder son was left with such manifest superior advantages as to territory that the younger brother could not venture to compete with him. As his share Charles had the part of his father’s kingdom from which the Frankish hosts derived their chief military strength, viz.: the lands from the Main to the English Channel. Besides this, he received the western portion of Aquitaine, the province whose conquest had cost Pippin a hard struggle of seven years, and which, therefore, might become a dangerous center of warlike enterprise if it were placed entirely in the hands of the younger brother. Carloman had as his share the Suabian lands on both sides of the upper Rhine, and the entire Mediterranean coast from the Maritime Alps to the frontier of Spain. In addition to this there came to him the eastern half of the territory adjacent to such towns as Clermont, Rodez, Albi, and Toulouse. In geographical extent there was but little advantage on the part of the elder brother, but the territory of the younger from a military point of view was far inferior. Carloman in case of war would have against him, under the command of Charles, the whole military power of the Franks. There was no pretense of friendship between the two new rulers; it seems they had never been friendly. The reason of the alienation may have been because the birth of Charles preceded the formal transfer of the Frankish crown to his father. He was, therefore, the son of a Mayor of the Palace, while Carloman, though younger, was son of the King of the Franks.