arlovingians, the more zealous they were in promoting the growth
of her moral power and the restoration of her discipline ... That was
the time at which there began to be seen the spectacle of the national
assemblies of the Franks, the gatherings at the March parades
transformed into ecclesiastical synods under the presidency of the
titular legate of the Roman pontiff, and dictating, by the mouth of the
political authority, regulations and laws with the direct and formal aim
of restoring divine worship and ecclesiastical discipline, and of
assuring the spiritual welfare of the people."

Pepin, after he had been proclaimed king and had settled matters with
the Church as well as the warlike questions remaining for him to solve
permitted, directed all his efforts toward the two countries which,
after his father's example, he longed to reunite to the Gallo-Frankish
monarchy, that is, Septimania, still occupied by the Arabs, and
Aquitaine, the independence of which was stoutly and ably defended by
Duke Eudes' grandson, Duke Waifre. The conquest of Septimania was rather
tedious than difficult. The Franks, after having victoriously scoured
the open country of the district, kept invested during three years its
capital, Narbonne, where the Arabs of Spain, much weakened by their
dissensions, vainly tried to throw in reinforcements. Besides the
Mussulman Arabs, the population of the town numbered many Christian
Goths, who were tired of suffering for the defence of their oppressors,
and who entered into secret negotiations with the chiefs of Pepin's
army, the end of which was that they opened the gates of the town. In
759, then, after forty years of Arab rule, Narbonne passed definitively
under that of the Franks, who guaranteed to the inhabitants free
enjoyment of their Gothic or Roman law and of their local institutions.
It even appears that, in the province of Spain bordering on Septimania,
an Arab chief, called Soliman, who was in command at Gerona and
Barcelona, between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, submitted to Pepin,
himself and the country under him. This was an important event, indeed,
in the reign of Pepin, for here was the point at which Islamism, but
lately aggressive and victorious in Southern Europe, began to feel
definitively beaten and to recoil before Christianity.

The conquest of Aquitaine and Vasconia was much more keenly disputed and
for a much longer time uncertain. Duke Waif re was as able in
negotiation as in