ing
him, however, not to incorporate his conquest with the Frankish
dominions, as it would wound the pride of the conquered people to be
thus absorbed by the conquerors, and to take merely the title of "King
of the Franks and Lombards." Charlemagne appreciated and accepted this
wise advice; for he could preserve proper limits in his ambition and in
the hour of victory. Three years afterward he even did more than Pope
Adrian had advised. In 777 Queen Hildegarde bore him a son, Pepin, whom
in 781 Charlemagne had baptized and anointed King of Italy at Rome by
the Pope, thus separating not only the two titles, but also the two
kingdoms, and restoring to the Lombards a national existence, feeling
quite sure that so long as he lived the unity of his different dominions
would not be imperilled. Having thus regulated at Rome his own affairs
and those of the Church, he returned to his camp, took Pavia, received
the submission of all the Lombard dukes and counts, save one only,
Aregisius, Duke of Beneventum, and entered France again, taking with
him, as prisoner, King Didier, whom he banished to a monastery, first at
Liege and then at Corbie, where the dethroned Lombard, say the
chroniclers, ended his days in saintly fashion.

The prompt success of this war in Italy, undertaken at the appeal of the
head of the Church, this first sojourn of Charlemagne at Rome, the
spectacles he had witnessed and the homage he had received, exercised
over him, his plans and his deeds, a powerful influence. This rough
Frankish warrior, chief of a people who were beginning to make a
brilliant appearance upon the stage of the world, and issue himself of a
new line, had a taste for what was grand, splendid, ancient, and
consecrated by time and public respect; he understood and estimated at
its full worth the moral force and importance of such allies. He
departed from Rome in 774, more determined than ever to subdue Saxony,
to the advantage of the Church as well as of his own power, and to
promote, in the South as in the North, the triumph of the Frankish
Christian dominion.

Three years afterward, in 777, he had convoked at Paderborn, in
Westphalia, that general assembly of his different peoples at which
Wittikind did not attend, and which was destined to bring upon the
Saxons a more and more obstinate war. "The Saracen Ibn-al-Arabi," says
Eginhard, "came to this town, to present himself before the King. He had
arrived from Spain, together with othe