provoked the last and mortal struggle of the Holy Roman Empire with the
Papacy, which presented the most stubborn obstacle to the leaders of the
_Risorgimento_.

Like his father, Pepin laboured hard to knit together the conquests of
the early Merovingians, but without the same success. He expelled the
Arabs from Narbonne; he recovered the duchy of Aquitaine and suppressed
the ducal dynasty after eight hard-fought campaigns. But neither from
the Saxons nor from the Bavarians could he win effective recognition of
his suzerainty. What he had achieved in Aquitaine was seriously
endangered when, on his deathbed, he followed the tradition of dividing
his realm between his sons Carloman and Charles (768). Fortunately
Charles, though harassed by the intrigues of his incompetent senior,
weathered the storm of a new Aquitanian rising; he saw Carloman sink
unlamented into an early grave (771) and easily obtained recognition as
sole king. Then indeed he stood in a position singularly favourable for
prosecuting a policy which should embrace and transcend the ambitions of
his ancestors. Heir to a power extending from the Atlantic to the
Bohemian border in the one direction, in the other from the North Sea
and the Channel to the Alps and Pyrenees; the hereditary patron of the
Roman Church; ruler of a hierarchy which had definitely accepted the
ideal of a Christian Republic and desired to see Christian unity
enforced by the sword of the secular power; lord of a military caste of
vassals filled with the pride and lust of conquest; he had at his
disposal the resources and supporters sufficient to make him, what
Theodoric had idly dreamed of becoming, the supreme lord of the Teutonic
peoples, the lieutenant of the Empire in all the western provinces. It
was no ordinary man to whom this opportunity fell. Imperfectly educated,
even for his age, but of ready wit and unbounded curiosity; a general
whose iron will and superhuman energy seldom failed in leading his