Events came to the aid of this wise conduct. Five years after the death
of Charles Martel, in 746 in fact, Carloman, already weary of the burden
of power, and seized with a fit of religious zeal, abdicated his share
of sovereignty, left his dominions to his brother Pepin, had himself
shorn by the hands of Pope Zachary, and withdrew into Italy to the
monastery of Monte Cassino. The preceding year, in 745, Hunald, duke of
Aquitaine, with more patriotic and equally pious views, also abdicated
in favor of his son Waifre, whom he thought more capable than himself of
winning the independence of Aquitaine, and went and shut himself up in a
monastery in the island of Rhe, where was the tomb of his father Eudes.
In the course of divers attempts at conspiracy and insurrection, the
Frankish princes' young brother, Grippo, was killed in combat while
crossing the Alps. The furious internal dissensions among the Arabs of
Spain, and their incessant wars with the Berbers, did not allow them to
pursue any great enterprise in Gaul. Thanks to all these circumstances,
Pepin found himself, in 747, sole master of the heritage of Clovis, and
with the sole charge of pursuing, in state and church, his father's
work, which was the unity and grandeur of Christian France.
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