The prompt success of this war in Italy, undertaken at the appeal of the
head of the Church, this first sojourn of Charlemagne at Rome, the
spectacles he had witnessed and the homage he had received, exercised
over him, his plans and his deeds, a powerful influence. This rough
Frankish warrior, chief of a people who were beginning to make a
brilliant appearance upon the stage of the world, and issue himself of a
new line, had a taste for what was grand, splendid, ancient, and
consecrated by time and public respect; he understood and estimated at
its full worth the moral force and importance of such allies. He
departed from Rome in 774, more determined than ever to subdue Saxony,
to the advantage of the Church as well as of his own power, and to
promote, in the South as in the North, the triumph of the Frankish
Christian dominion.
Three years afterward, in 777, he had convoked at Paderborn, in
Westphalia, that general assembly of his different peoples at which
Wittikind did not attend, and which was destined to bring upon the
Saxons a more and more obstinate war.
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