At the end of this first campaign, Pepin's widow, the
queen-mother Bertha, reconciled her two sons; but an unexpected
incident, the death of Carloman two years afterward in 771,
reestablished unity more surely than the reconciliation had
reestablished harmony. For, although Carloman left sons, the grandees of
his dominions, whether laic or ecclesiastical, assembled at Corbeny,
between Laon and Rheims, and proclaimed in his stead his brother
Charles, who thus became sole king of the Gallo-Franco-Germanic
monarchy. And as ambition and manners had become less tinged with
ferocity than they had been under the Merovingians, the sons of Carloman
were not killed or shorn or even shut up in a monastery: they retired
with their mother, Gerberge, to the court of Didier, King of the
Lombards. "King Charles," says Eginhard, "took their departure
patiently, regarding it as of no importance." Thus commenced the reign
of Charlemagne.
The original and dominant characteristic of the hero of this reign, that
which won for him, and keeps for him after more than ten centuries, the
name of great, is the striking variety of his ambition, his faculties,
and his deeds.
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