It even appears that, in the province of Spain bordering on Septimania,
an Arab chief, called Soliman, who was in command at Gerona and
Barcelona, between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, submitted to Pepin,
himself and the country under him. This was an important event, indeed,
in the reign of Pepin, for here was the point at which Islamism, but
lately aggressive and victorious in Southern Europe, began to feel
definitively beaten and to recoil before Christianity.
The conquest of Aquitaine and Vasconia was much more keenly disputed and
for a much longer time uncertain. Duke Waif re was as able in
negotiation as in war; at one time he seemed to accept the pacific
overtures of Pepin, or, perhaps, himself made similar, without bringing
about any result; at another, he went to seek and found even in Germany
allies who caused Pepin much embarrassment and peril. The population of
Aquitaine hated the Franks; and the war, which for their duke was a
question of independent sovereignty, was for themselves a question of
passionate national feeling.
Pepin, who was naturally more humane and even more generous, it may be
said, in war than his predecessors had usually been, was nevertheless
induced, in his struggle against the Duke of Aquitaine, to ravage
without mercy the countries he scoured, and to treat the vanquished with
great harshness.
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