In 737, King Thierry died; but so firmly was the power of Charles Martel established now, that he could safely neglect to name a successor to the dead “monarch;” nay, in 741, he actually proceeded before a general assembly of the nobility and the army, to divide his dominions between his two sons of his first marriage (with Rotrudis), bestowing Austrasia, with Suabia and Thuringia, upon the elder, Carloman; Neustria, Burgundy, and Provence, upon the younger, Pepin. His son Grypho, whom Suanehilda had borne him, he excluded at first from all participation in his succession; subsequently he assigned him also a portion, which, after his death, led to the oppression and imprisonment of the youth by his elder brothers. In the same year (741) Charles was, on his return from a kind of pilgrimage to St. Denys, seized with a violent fever, of which he died at Carisiacum, or Quiercy, on the Oise, on the 22nd October.
FOOTNOTES:
[92] Pepin of Landen was the son of Carloman, a Frank noble of Brabant. Pepin’s daughter, Begga, was married to Arnulf’s son, Ansgesil; from this marriage sprang Pepin d’Heristal, the father of Charles Martel.
[93] However, two natural sons of Charibert founded, after the death of the latter, the semi-independent duchy of Aquitaine, in a more restricted sense, with the capital, Thoulouse.
[94] Mamaccæ (Mommarques) on the Oise between Compiègne and Noyon.
[95] Pepin of Heristal restored the annual national assembly of the Franks, which had fallen in desuetude since the days of Ebroin; when the younger Pepin, the son of Charles Martel, finally added the name of King to the exercise of the royal power which he wielded, he changed the month of meeting from March to May; the Campus Martius became accordingly a Campus Majus.
[96] Nam et opes et potentia regni penes palatii præfectos, qui Majores Domûs dicebantur, et ad quos summa imperii pertinebat, tenebantur; neque regi aliud relinquebatur quam ut regis tantum nomine contentus, speciem dominantis effingeret, legatos audiret, eisque abeuntibus responsa, quæ erat edoctus vel etiam JUSSUS, ex sua velut potestate redderet; cum præter inutile regis nomen et præcarium vitæ stipendium, quod ei præfectus aulæ, prout videbatur, exhibebat, nihil aliud proprium possideret.—Einhardi, (Eginhart,) Vita Caroli Magni; Pertz, Monumenta Germaniæ Historica, Tomus II., p. 444.
[97] At one time, it would appear, the Frison prince was on the point of consenting to his baptism; he had already placed one foot in the baptismal font, when it occurred to him to ask the officiating bishop (Wolfram, of Sens), “where his ancestors were gone to?” “To Hell,” was the unhesitating reply of the bigoted priest; whereupon the honest heathen exclaimed: “Then I will rather be damned with them than saved without them,” and withdrew his foot.
[98] Perhaps in some measure in consequence of the consecration of the missionary Willibrod, as bishop of Utrecht (696)?
[99] Of the race of the Bojoarian Agilolfingians.