Charlemagne King of the Franks Ruler of the Church
... Miraculously, he won the day, and from that time on, was the de facto ruler of the Franks. Charles Martel was succeeded as Mayor of the Palace by his son, Pepin "the Short," who later was crowned king of the Franks. ... However, in the wake of a long line of increasingly weak Merovingian kings, Pepin abandoned this lesser title and in 751 assumed the kingship of the Franks. ... Besides crowning Pepin, the pope also anointed both Charlemagne and his younger brother Carloman, Pepin’s sons. ... During Pepin’s reign, his son Charlemagne accompanied the Frankish army on campaigns to defend the pope against the Lombards, a Germanic people who controlled northern and central Italy, and on missions to conquer the region of Aquitaine in what is now southern France. As a result, Charlemagne learned at an early age the importance of both strong leadership on the battlefield and of close links between secular power and the Roman Catholic Church (Harrington). Charlemagne did not receive proper education as a child, which attributed to his life-long battle with illiteracy. ... On September 24, 768, just minutes before his death, King Pepin divided his lands between his two sons. As Russell Chamberlains biography "Charlemagne" tells us, Charlemagne was allotted all lands running westward from present-day Ratisbon on the Danube River and from the River Saal to the North Sea. ... Hunald, the former Duke of Aquitaine, beaten by Pepin, broke from the monastery where he had lived as a monk for twenty years and stirred up a revolt in the western region of that county, where Charlemagne’s territory was. Carloman should have aided Charlemagne, by the Frankish custom, because he himself held part of Aquitaine; but he pretended that it was no business of his, as his dominion was unaffected by the revolt. However, Hunald was single-handedly vanquished by Charlemagne, and was betrayed by his nephew, and sent to Rome under charges for abandoning his monastic vows. ... The true importance to Charlemagne was the expression of his brother’s disregard and unkindness by taking no precautions against Hunald’s revolt (“Charlemagne”). After Carloman died suddenly in 771, Charlemagne became sole king of the Franks, and immediately afterward traveled to Rome and assured Pope Hadrian II of his continued support (Halnon). At that time the Franks were falling back into barbarian ways, neglecting their education and religion. ... In the south, the Roman Catholic Church was asserting its power to recover land confiscated by the Lombard kingdom of Italy (Chew). In 772, Charlemagne executed his first Saxon campaign, and although it was small it was a success. He planned for one the next year, but in January, Pope Hadrian sent envoys to Charlemagne formally asking for help. ... In June of 774, Pavia fell and Lombardy was completely conquered by Charlemagne.