The question of the duration of external harmony between the brothers was of especial importance in its effect on the situation in the Italian peninsula. Some of the Frankish nobles had by no means approved of Pippin’s policy of opposition to the Lombard kings, and had criticised his willingness to protect the integrity of the dominions of the Pope, whenever he was appealed to from Rome for aid. The efforts of the Queen Mother Bertrada were evidently intended to promote a better feeling between the Franks and the Lombards, for she personally arranged a marriage between Charles and the daughter of Desiderius, the Lombard king. The protests of the Pope were unavailing when he urged, from a decidedly interested point of view, that Charles should marry a wife from his own people; although he recalled the oaths taken, when the two Frankish rulers were children, that they would have the same friends and the same enemies as the Church. The whole situation, political as well as personal, was suddenly changed by the death of Carloman in 771, and by domestic difficulties in Charles’ own household which led to an alienation from his mother and caused the repudiation of his Lombard wife. Immediately after his brother’s death Charles was acknowledged as sole king throughout the Frankish territories, and the alliance with the Lombard party in Italy was brought to an end. Gerberga, Carloman’s widow, and her sons betook themselves to the court of Desiderius, which now became a natural refuge for all who were discontented with the new ruler of the Franks. II CONSOLIDATION OF RULE In the meantime, Pope Stephen, the man who had made the Frankish alliance the cornerstone of papal diplomacy, had died. (772.) He was succeeded by Hadrian, who proclaimed his purpose to follow the rule of peacemaker in the complexities of Italian politics, and so to induce Romans, Franks, and Lombards to live in mutual harmony. Despite his pacific intentions, he was unable to tolerate the military aggression of the Lombards on the cities in the Patrimony which had been turned over to the Pope by Pippin, including Ravenna itself. Papal protests against this invasion proved useless. Desiderius threatened to appear with his army before the walls of Rome itself, and he actually approached as close to the city as Viterbo, having in his army the young heirs of Carloman, whose claims to their father’s inheritance he wished to have legitimatized by having them anointed by the Pope. He was deterred from carrying out his plan, and the Pope met the daring of the Lombard leader with a formal warning, that the king and all his host would be placed under the ban of anathema if they entered the territory of Rome. Desiderius therefore withdrew.