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756-763] clusae of Mont Cenis, and Aistulf again took refuge behind the walls of Pavia. Shut up in this fortress, he again entreated forgiveness and peace of Pepin by the nobles' intervention. The latter granted the rebel life and realm, which he had forfeited. Following the Frankish verdict to which he had appealed, he was obliged to pay as indemnity a third of the great royal hoard and costlier presents than two years before to guarantee his further submission, and engage himself to pay a yearly tribute of 12,000 solidi, as the Lombards had once done in the time of Agilulf. He actually now yielded up the towns whose surrender had been stipulated two years earlier and Comacchio besides, and so the same boundaries were re-established which had parted the two territories before Aistulf s accession to the throne. Liutprand's conquests however remained to the Lombard dominion, so that to the great disappointment of pope and emperor the status of the peace made in 680 was not restored. Nevertheless this was the greatest humiliation the Lombard realm had ever suffered for more than a century and a half, since that first league between the Byzantine Emperor and the Franks had been broken. Aistulf's eager policy of attack was crossed by a new factor which had not entered into his predecessor's calculations. The proud king did not long survive his fall. He died in consequence of an accident while hunting (December 756).

After Aistulf's death a grave crisis broke out in the Lombard State. The monk Ratchis left Monte Cassino and was acknowledged as ruler, "servant of Christ and prince of the Lombard people," especially in the north of the Apennines. But Spoleto as well as Benevento detached itself from the kingdom and set up Alboin as duke of Spoleto, who swore an oath of allegiance to the pope and the Frankish king. The duke Desiderius was raised upon the buckler in Tuscany, and as he engaged himself by document and by oath to surrender the towns belonging to the Empire, and to live in peace and friendship with the pope and the Frankish king, the Frankish plenipotentiary in Rome supported him with great energy and the pope prepared the Roman army for his defence. Ratchis then abdicated for the second time. On the pope's demand, Desiderius actually ceded Faenza and Ferrara, but as soon as he felt himself sure on the throne, he entered Spoleto by force without consideration of the pope's wishes, made Duke Alboin prisoner as a rebel, drove away the duke Liutprand of Benevento, who was obliged to take refuge behind the walls of Otranto, and set up Arichis as duke in his place, and gave him his daughter Adelperga to wife. He made a proposal of co-operation against the pope and the duke of Benevento to an imperial embassy which passed by: at the same time he tried to render the pope's connexion with his former allies as difficult as possible, appeared at St Peter's grave in Rome, pretending friendly intentions, and forced the pope to write a letter to Pepin, interceding for the surrender of the Lombard hostages. To be