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This year (772) Charles kept the festivals of Easter and Christmas at Herstall, on the Meuse. About this period Didier, King of Lombardy, invaded the states of St. Peter. Coming at the head of ten thousand stout lances, he laid siege to Rome. Pope Adrian did not lose heart for a trifle like that. He closed the gates of the Eternal City, carefully inspected the walls, and manned them with troops, determined to perish amid the ruins of his capital rather than surrender.
Then he sent a deputation of bishops and men of distinction to Charlemagne, to remind the son of King Pepin that he was a Roman noble, and that it was his duty to defend the Church in the person of its supreme head. The Emperor was not desperately fond of his ex-father-in-law, at whose court all his enemies found refuse. He had lone meditated an expedition in his direction, and so, accepting with joy this providential chance, he convened a full court at Paderborn. The expedition was resolved on enthusiastically, and Geneva was chosen as the rendezvous of the forces. The army was divided into two sections. Bernard, Charlemagne’s uncle, had command of one column, with orders to cross Mount Joux (St. Bernard), and open a campaign in the plains of Milan, while the Emperor led his half of the army over Mount Cenis.
In vain did Adalgisus, son of Didier, attempt to defend the passes of the Alps. He was everywhere repulsed, and was hemmed in at Pavia, where his father joined him (October, 773). Pavia was then a castle, which would well have deserved the reputation of being impregnable if it had not (as is the case with all impregnable places) been taken several times. Nevertheless, it displayed some coquettishness in the matter, never permitting itself to be captured till after a wearisome war; for it required no less than a whole winter to scale its walls, which were seventy feet high, to carry its seventeen gates, and make oneself master of its sixty-two towers.
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Charlemagne went to Rome to spend the Holy Week. He entered it in triumph on the 2nd of April, 774. A grand procession of bishops and nobles went out to meet him at Novi, and accompanied him to St. John at the Lateran, where Adrian waited to receive him. The crowd hailed him as a preserver. He was surrounded by banners and crosses; people of distinction vied for the honour of carrying his victorious arms; and little children, dressed in ancient costume, strewed flowers in his horse’s path. The Pope and the Emperor embraced, and the latter, after having taken the sacrament, visited, attended by his suite, all the sacred spots in the great capital of the Christian world.