by his signal victory over the Saracens, had saved his country,
and perhaps Europe, from the Mahometan yoke. The ambassadors of
the pope were received by Charles with decent reverence; but the
greatness of his occupations, and the shortness of his life,
prevented his interference in the affairs of Italy, except by a
friendly and ineffectual mediation. His son Pepin, the heir of
his power and virtues, assumed the office of champion of the
Roman church; and the zeal of the French prince appears to have
been prompted by the love of glory and religion. But the danger
was on the banks of the Tyber, the succor on those of the Seine,
and our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.
Amidst the tears of the city, Stephen the Third embraced the
generous resolution of visiting in person the courts of Lombardy
and France, to deprecate the injustice of his enemy, or to excite
the pity and indignation of his friend. After soothing the
public despair by litanies and orations, he undertook this
laborious journey with the ambassadors of the French monarch and
the Greek emperor. The king of the Lombards was inexorable; but
his threats could not silence the complaints, nor retard the
speed of the Roman pontiff, who traversed the Pennine Alps,
reposed in the abbey of St. Maurice, and hastened to grasp the
right hand of his protector; a hand which was never lifted in
vain, either in war or friendship. Stephen was entertained as
the visible successor of the apostle; at the next assembly, the
field of March or of May, his injuries were exposed to a devout
and warlike nation, and he repassed the Alps, not as a suppliant,
but as a conqueror, at the head of a French army, which was led
by the king in person. The Lombards, after a weak resistance,
obtained an ignominious peace, and swore to restore the
possessions, and to respect the sanctity, of the Roman church.