the Lombards was a
laborious and an expensive business, and Pepin had much to occupy him
at home.

In January 756, however, Aistulf, mad from the start, laid siege to
Rome, and for three months laid waste the farms of the Campagna, S.
Peter's patrimony. Narni was taken and indeed all seemed as hopeless
as ever. Then the pope took up his pen and as the successor of the
Prince of the Apostles wrote a letter as from S. Peter himself and
sent it to the three kings, Pepin, Charles, and Carloman, to the
bishops, abbots, priests and monks, the dukes, counts, armies, and
people of Francia. Gibbon thus summarises this extraordinary and
dramatic epistle: "The apostle assures his adoptive sons the king, the
clergy, and the nobles of France that dead in the flesh, he is still
alive in the spirit; that they now hear and must obey the voice of the
founder and guardian of the Roman Church; that the Virgin, the angels,
the saints, and the martyrs, and all the host of heaven unanimously
urge the request, and will confess the obligation; that riches,
victory, and paradise will crown their pious enterprise; and that
eternal damnation will be the penalty of their neglect, if they suffer
his tomb, his temple, and his people to fall into the hands of the
perfidious Lombards."

Pepin could not be deaf to such an appeal. He again crossed the Mont
Cenis, and again the Lombards were as chaff before him. On his march
to Pavia he was met by two envoys from Constantinople who had
ill-treated, detained, and outstripped the papal ambassador. They
besought Pepin to restore Ravenna and the exarchate to the empire, but
he denied them and declared roundly that "on no account whatsoever
should those cities be alienated from the power of the blessed Peter
and the jurisdiction of the Roman Church and the Apostolic See,
affirming too with an oath that for no man's favour had he given
himself once again to this conflict, but only for love of S. Peter and
for the pardon of his sins; asserting, also, that no abundance of
treasure would bribe him to take away what he had once offered for S.
Peter's acceptance."[1]

[Footnote 1: Cf. Hodgkin, _op, cit_. vii. p. 217.]

Pepin marched on; Pavia was besieged, Aistulf was beaten to the dust.
A treaty was drawn up in which the Lombard gave to "S. Peter, the Holy
Roman Church, and all the popes of the Apostolic See forever" the
Exarchate, the Pentapolis, and Comacchio. An officer was commissioned
to receive the sub