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 290 CHARLES (GERMANY) Adrian L, crossed the Alps in 773 at the head of a powerful army, besieged Pavia for eight months, and took possession of it only when its defenders had been disabled by pestilence and famine. Desiderius was exiled to the monas- tery of Corbie in France, and Charlemagne crowned himself with the ancient iron crown of the Lombard kings; but he had scarcely left Italy when Adelgis, son of Desiderius, sup- ported by the dukes of Spoleto, Friuli, and Benevento, rose in arms against the conqueror. The rebels were crushed at once, and Charle- magne, to make the submission of Lombardy more sure, appointed his second son, Pepin, to reign over the country (776). Meanwhile war was actively prosecuted against the Saxons ; the most important, protracted, and terrific of all his wars. Commencing in 772, it termina- ted only in 804, after a duration of 82 years, with very little interruption. On his first ex- pedition, he took Eresburg, destroyed the ven- erated statue known as Irminsul, and pene- trated victoriously as far as the Weser. But the Saxons were far from being conquered. In 775 he invaded their country again, slaugh- tered all who offered resistance, devastated the towns which were not prompt enough in their submission, and now considered his power firmly established. Far from it ; they rose the following year, and, notwithstanding repeated defeats, renewed their resistance in 777, but were again subdued. Charlemagne's power now seemed securely established. He held a placi- tum at Paderborn, where many Saxon tribes acknowledged his authority and were baptized. Wittikind, their intrepid chief, the hero who inspired them with his courage and love of in- dependence, had been obliged to take refuge with a northern prince. Charlemagne im- proved this interval of apparent tranquillity to make war on Abderrahman, the new caliph of Cordova. Crossing the Pyrenees in 778, he took Pamplona, Saragossa, and the territory as far as the Ebro ; but a severe misfortune attend- ed his return to France. The rear guard of his army was overtaken in the narrow passes of Roncesvalles by the Basques, the inveterate enemies of the Franks, and destroyed to the last man ; among the valiant chiefs who were slain was Roland, whom history scarcely no- tices till his later renown in the annals of chiv- alry. But the presence of Charlemagne was required on the Elbe ; the indomitable Saxons had revolted again under Wittikind ; they could not endure the foreign yoke, and, above all, they hated Christianity. Charlemagne adopt- ed against them measures of the greatest sever- ity and cruelty; more than 4,000 prisoners were at one time slaughtered ; many thousands of the Saxons were transplanted with their fam- ilies into Frankish countries ; part of Saxony was laid waste, and every means resorted to to crush the spirit of its inhabitants. Two great battles, which took place at Detmold in 783, destroyed their last forces, and Wittikind, despairing of the future, surrendered in 785, swore allegiance to Charlemagne at Attigny- sur-Seine, and was baptized. This, however, was far from being the last of these bloody struggles; the independence of Saxony found other champions, who more obscurely, but not less heroically, undertook their patriotic task. The alternate succession of risings and defeats went on almost uninterruptedly, until Saxony, completely exhausted by repeated losses, and bent down under the despotic organization devised by the conqueror, had no recourse but to give up her national freedom and religion. The diffusion of the gospel was aided by conquest ; the bishoprics or missionary stations of Minden, Halberstadt, Verden, Bremen, Munster, Hildesheim, Osna- bruck, and Paderborn were the origin of as many cities ; and the old Saxon nationality was completely broken down. While this desper- ate struggle was still at its height, Charle- magne had to baffle the treacherous designs of Tassilo, the Agilolfingian duke of Bavaria, who, although a tributary of the Frankish monarch, held secret intercourse with his enemies, and attempted to unite the Saxons, the Lombards, the Avars, the Slavs, and the Saracens against him. The duke was arrested, arraigned as a traitor before an assembly of lords at Ingel- heim in 787, and sentence of death passed upon him, which, however, was commuted to im- prisonment in the monastery of Jumieges, near Rouen. Bavaria was now divided into coun- ties under Frankish governors. Charlemagne afterward conquered several of the Slavic tribes along the banks of the Baltic, undertook a war of extermination against the Avars, which lasted from 794 to 796, and put their country under the administration of Frankish counts and bishops. Having thus taken possession of the northeast of Spain, the larger part of Italy, and northern and eastern Germany, he found himself at the close of the 8th century master of an empire bounded N. by the Baltic sea. the Eider, the North sea, and the British chan- nel ; W. by the Atlantic ocean ; S. by the Ebro, the Mediterranean, the Volturno, and the Adriatic ; and E. by the Theiss and the Oder. Margraviates, or military marches, were es- tablished for the protection of the land fron- tiers, while fleets were in readiness on the sea- shore to oppose the piratical invasions of the Saracens and the Northmen. So extensive dominion seemed fully to warrant a higher ap- pellation than that of king ; and moreover, the ultimate aim of his conquests had been the res- toration of the western Roman empire. Hav- ing been induced to visit Italy to protect Pope Leo III. against his rebellious clergy, the Frankish king was solemnly and triumphantly crowned by the grateful pontiff in St. Peter's church, on the Christmas day of the 800th year of the Christian era. Henceforth he styled himself emperor of the West, and, with a view of reestablishing the ancient Roman empire, proposed to marry Irene, the Byzantine em- press ; a project baffled by her deposition.