Less than two years after the downfall of the Lombard monarchy, at the end of 775, when Charles was fully committed to his life-and-death contest with Saxon heathenism, he received tidings of an attempt on the part of at least one Lombard duchy to recover its independence. Before leaving Italy he had either appointed a Lombard noble named Hrodgaud, Duke of Friuli, or had confirmed him in the possession of that duchy. Forum Julii, which we now know by the name of Friuli, and whose chief city is now called Cividale, included the fertile lands north of the Venetian Gulf, and was of primary importance to the Frankish king as it touched on the one side the provinces of Venetia and Istria (wavering at this time between allegiance to him and their old allegiance to Constantinople) and on the other side the lands of the Duke of Bavaria, who, as we shall soon see, was one of the most untrustworthy of subject princes.
Hrodgaud appears to have been engaged in some obscure negotiations with the Lombard dukes of Chiusi and Benevento for cutting short the new papal territories, perhaps also for bringing in the exiled son of Desiderius and raising once more the standard of Lombard independence. But the combination failed, owing perhaps in part to the death of the Emperor Constantine V., which happened in the autumn of 775. The young Lombard prince Adelchis failed to make his appearance in Italy; the Dukes of Chiusi and Benevento hung back from the dangerous enterprise and Hrodgaud of Friuli was left alone to meet the Frankish avenger. His courage did not fail; he seems to have proclaimed himself king, doubtless “King of the Lombards,” and persuaded many cities in Northern Italy to join his standard. But Charles, warned of his revolt before the end of 775, crossed the Alps in the early months of 776. The passes cannot yet have been open, and it must have been with a small but select body of troops that he made his rapid descent upon Friuli. Hrodgaud seems to have fallen in battle. Cividale surrendered. Treviso, where Hrodgaud’s father-in-law, Stabilinus, sought to prolong the struggle, was also captured and was the scene of Charles’s Easter festivities. All the other revolted cities were taken, and in June Charles recrossed the Alps to march swiftly northward to recapture the oft-taken Eresburg, and to baptize some thousands of Saxons in the Lippe.
Considering the difficulties of locomotion at that time this short Italian campaign against Hrodgaud seems to have been one of the most rapid and brilliant of all the military operations of King Charles. The suppression of the revolt was followed, not indeed by bloodshed, but by severe confiscations of the property of the insurgents. We have a piteous account by the great Lombard historian, Paulus Diaconus,[43] of the seven years’ captivity of his brother, who is generally believed to have been punished for his share in this insurrection. “My brother languishes a captive in your land, broken-hearted, in nakedness and want. His unhappy wife, with quivering lips, begs for bread from street to street. Four children must she support in this humiliating manner, whom she is scarce able to cover even with rags.”
The next threatening of internal disaffection came from a quarter in which the sky had long looked lowering. Tassilo III., Duke of Bavaria, was the most independent and high-spirited of all the subject nobles in the Frankish kingdom. Sprung from the old Agilolfing line, which for more than two centuries had ruled the Bavarian people, he had some pretensions to a descent from Merovingian royalty, and was the undoubted grandson of Charles Martel, and therefore first cousin of King Charles, with whom he was strictly contemporary, having been born in the year 742. The dependence of Bavaria upon the Frankish crown had always been of the slightest kind, consisting of little more than a verbal recognition of the supremacy of the Frankish king, and the sending of a contingent to serve in the Frankish army, while, in all the details of ordinary administration, the will of the Agilolfing duke seems to have been practically supreme. Moreover, close ties of affinity and common interests had long united the ducal house of Bavaria and the regal house of Lombard Italy. Together they had resisted the incursions of their turbulent neighbors on the east, the Avars and the Sclaves; together they had sought, rather by diplomacy than by war, to keep at a distance from them the domineering Frank.
In the later years of Pippin, as has been already stated, this tendency of Bavaria to independence was openly displayed. It is true that in the year 757, when Pippin was holding his placitum at Compiègne, thither came the young Tassilo with the chiefs of his nation, and, “after the Frankish manner placing his hands in the hands of the king, commended himself unto him in vassalage, and promised fidelity both to King Pippin himself and to his sons Charles and Carloman by an oath on the body of St. Dionysius, and not only there, but also over the bodies of St. Martin and St. Germanus with a similar oath promised that he would keep faith towards his aforesaid lords all the days of his life. And similarly all the chiefs and seniors of the Bavarians who had come with him into the presence of the king promised at the said holy places that they would keep faith towards the king and his sons.” But the very insistence on this ceremony probably showed that the loyalty of the Bavarians was deemed precarious. It is certain that six years later (763), in the very crisis of the war with Aquitaine, “Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria, neglected his oaths and all his promises, forgot all the benefits which he had received from his uncle, King Pippin, and, making a fraudulent excuse of sickness, withdrew himself from the campaign. Then, strengthening his resolution to revolt, he stoutly declared that he would come no more into the king’s presence.” This was nothing less than to commit the crime of harisliz (military desertion), which, according to Frankish law, was punishable by death. But as we saw, King Pippin wisely determined to fight with one enemy at a time, and devoted all his energies to the long war with Waifar of Aquitaine, a war which practically occupied him till the end of his days. Thus the harisliz of Tassilo III. went for the time unpunished.
Then came Charles’s accession to the throne, and his marriage with the daughter of Desiderius. By this marriage a tie of affinity was formed between the two cousins,—the lord and the contumacious vassal,—for Tassilo also about the same time married another daughter of Desiderius, named Liutberga. It seemed for a short time as if Frank, Bavarian, and Lombard might dwell together in amity; but only for a short time. Soon followed the repudiation of the Lombard princess, Pope Hadrian’s cry for help, the invasion of Italy, the fall of the Lombard kingdom. During all these stirring events Tassilo seems to have remained quiescent, yet assuredly then, if ever, would have been his chance to assert the independence after which he yearned.
So too during the rebellion of Hrodgaud of Friuli, when doubtless he might have intercepted Charles’s passage, and made the suppression of that rebellion a much more tedious affair than it actually was, Tassilo made no sign. He seems to have thought his sulky attitude of isolation and de facto independence of his lord would maintain itself without any trouble on his part, but he was greatly mistaken. His Frankish over-lord was no roi fainéant to let his rights thus quietly glide into desuetude.
Charles tried first spiritual means, which were perhaps suggested by the fact of his finding himself in the presence of the pope. Towards the end of 780, in one of those short lulls in the storm which made him deem the work of the subjugation of the Saxons complete, Charles visited Italy, kept his Christmas in the old Lombard palace at Pavia, held a placitum[44] at Mantua, and at Easter visited Rome. He was accompanied by his wife and his sons, Carloman and Louis, children of four and three years old. Carloman, who had not yet been baptized, was raised from the baptismal font by Pope Hadrian, who gave him the ancestral name of Pippin, and being anointed by the pope was declared by his father to be King of Italy. At the same time his yet more infantile brother, Louis, was anointed King of Aquitaine. Of course in both cases all kingly power remained in the hands of the great War-lord; but apparently the object of the ceremony was something like that which caused our Edward I. to name the baby Edward of Caernarvon, Prince of Wales. National pride was soothed, and national patriotism in some degree reassured, by the presence of a court and the assurance of a separate administration, even though the nominal head of the court was a little child in the nursery.
While Charles was at Rome there was converse between him and the pope concerning the Duke of Bavaria. Tassilo had been a liberal friend to the Church, and had successfully prosecuted the enterprise of the conversion of the Sclaves on his eastern frontier. Hadrian well knew how strained were the relations between duke and king, and was, we may believe, sincerely anxious to reconcile Tassilo to his mighty cousin. A joint embassy was despatched to the Bavarian court: the pope being represented by the bishops, Damasus and Formosus, the king by the deacon Richulf and Eberhard the arch-cupbearer. “And when,” says the chronicler, “these emissaries, obedient to their instruction, had conversed with the aforesaid duke, and reminded him of his old oaths to King Pippin, King Charles and the Franks, his heart was so much softened that he declared his willingness to hasten at once to the king’s presence, if such hostages were given him as to remove all doubt of his personal safety. These having been given, he came without delay to the king at Worms, swore the oath which was dictated to him, and gave twelve chosen hostages for the fulfilment of his promise that he would keep as towards King Charles and his loyal subjects all the oaths which he had sworn aforetime to King Pippin. These hostages were promptly brought to the king in his villa of Quierzy by Sindbert, Bishop of Ratisbon. But the said duke returning home did not long remain in the faith which he had promised.”
Notwithstanding the ominous words with which the chronicler concludes, a great moral victory had certainly been gained by Charles, and the attitude of sullen semi-independence which Tassilo had maintained for nearly twenty years was now abandoned.