This was not, however, Charlemagne's only great enterprise at this
epoch, nor the only great struggle he had to maintain. While he was
incessantly fighting in Germany, the work of policy commenced by his
father Pepin in Italy called for his care and his exertions. The new
King of the Lombards, Didier, and the new Pope, Adrian I, had entered
upon a new war; and Didier was besieging Rome, which was energetically
defended by the Pope and its inhabitants. In 773, Adrian invoked the aid
of the King of the Franks, whom his envoys succeeded, not without
difficulty, in finding at Thionville. Charlemagne could not abandon the
grand position left him by his father as protector of the papacy and as
patrician of Rome. The possessions, moreover, wrested by Didier from
the Pope were exactly those which Pepin had won by conquest from King
Astolphus, and had presented to the Papacy. Charlemagne was besides, on
his own account, on bad terms with the King of the Lombards, whose
daughter, Desiree, he had married, and afterward repudiated and sent
home to her father, in order to marry Hildegarde, a Suabian by nation.
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