We must now see what Charlemagne did in Italy. At this period the
Lombards were very troublesome to the Pope, and frequently assailed the
Roman territory. Accordingly, when Pope Adrian I. called on Charlemagne
for aid, the Frankish monarch crossed the Alps, defeated the Lombards,
shut up their king in a monastery, and himself assuming the famous “iron
crown” of Lombardy, united the whole of Upper Italy to the kingdom of
the Franks (A.D. 773). At the same time he confirmed the gifts made by
Pepin to the Pope.
The general result of all the wars and conquests which we have described
was that by the year 800 Charlemagne, who had inherited from Pepin a
kingdom scarcely equal to all Gaul, found himself lord of a dominion as
large as the ancient Roman Empire of the West, and extending from the
Ebro (in Spain) on the west to the Elbe in the northeast, the Theiss
(Hungary) in the southeast, and including half of Italy, with Corsica,
Sardinia, and the Balearic Isles. He fell heir to a kingdom; he was now
master of an empire.