ng their incursions and at another of destroying or hurling
back to a distance their settlements; and he brought his usual vigor and
perseverance to bear on this second struggle. But by the conquest of
Saxony he had attained his direct national object: the great flood of
population from East to West came, and broke against the Gallo-Franco-
Germanic dominion as against an insurmountable rampart.

This was not, however, Charlemagne's only great enterprise at this epoch,
nor the only great struggle he had to maintain. Whilst he was
incessantly fighting in Germany, the work of policy commenced by his
father Pepin in Italy called for his care and his exertions. The new
king of the Lombards, Didier, and the new Pope, Adrian I., had entered
upon a new war; and Dither was besieging Rome, which was energetically
defended by the Pope and its inhabitants. In 773, Adrian invoked the aid
of the king of the Franks, whom his envoys succeeded, not without
difficulty, in finding at Thionville. Charlemagne could not abandon the
grand position left him by his father as protector of the Papacy and as
patrician of Rome. The possessions, moreover, wrested by Didier from the
Pope were exactly those which Pepin had won by conquest from King
Astolphus, and had presented to the Papacy. Charlemagne was, besides, on
his own account, on bad terms with the king of the Lombards, whose
daughter, Desiree, he had married, and afterwards repudiated and sent
home to her father, in order to marry Hildegarde, a Suabian by nation.
Didier, in dudgeon, had given an asylum to Carloman's widow and sons, on
whose intrigues Charlemagne kept a watchful eye. Being prudent and
careful of appearances, even when he was preparing to strike a heavy
blow, Charlemagne tried, by means of special envoys, to obtain from the
king of the Lombards what the Pope demanded. On Didier's refusal he at
once set to work, convoked the general meeting of the Franks, at Geneva,
in the autumn of 773, gained them over, not without encountering some
objections, to the projected Italian expedition, and forthwith commenced
the campaign with two armies. One was to cross the Valais and descend
upon Lombardy by Mount St. Bernard; Charlemagne in person led the other,
by Mount Cenis. The Lombards, at the outlet of the passes of the Alps,
offered a vigorous resistance; but when the second army had penetrated
into Italy by Mount St. Bernard, Didier, threatened in his rear, retired
precipit