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 Basic Security Testing with Kali Linux

Cover design and photo provided by Moriah Dieterle.

Copyright © 2013 by Daniel W. Dieterle. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior
written permission of the publisher.

All trademarks, registered trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners.

ISBN-13: 978-1494861278
 Thanks to my family for their unending support and prayer, you are truly a gift from God!
Thanks to my friends in the infosec & cybersecurity community for sharing your knowledge and
time with me. And thanks to my friends in our local book writers club (especially you Bill!),
without your input, companionship and advice, this would have never happened.

Daniel Dieterle

“It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a
hundred battles” - Sun Tzu

“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and
harmless as doves.” - Matthew 10:16 (KJV)
 About the Author

Daniel W. Dieterle has worked in the IT field for over 20 years. During this time he
worked for a computer support company where he provided computer and network
support for hundreds of companies across Upstate New York and throughout Northern
Pennsylvania.

He also worked in a Fortune 500 corporate data center, briefly worked at an Ivy League school’s
computer support department and served as an executive at an electrical engineering company.

For about the last 5 years Daniel has been completely focused on security. He created and authors the
“CyberArms Computer Security Blog”, and his articles have been published in international security
magazines, and referenced by both technical entities and the media.

Daniel has assisted with numerous security training classes and technical training books mainly based
on Backtrack and Kali Linux.

Daniel W. Dieterle
[email protected]
Cyberarms.wordpress.com
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Introduction
What is Kali?
Why Use Kali?
Ethical Hacking Issues
Scope of this Book
Why did I write this book?
Disclaimer
Part 1: Installing and Basic Overview
Chapter 2 - Installing Kali with VMWare Player
Install VMWare Player & Kali
Updating Kali
Installing VMWare Tools for Linux
Installing Metasploitable 2
Windows Virtual Machines
Quick Desktop Tour
Part 2 - Metasploit Tutorial
Chapter 3 – Introduction to Metasploit
Metasploit Overview
Picking an Exploit
Setting Exploit Options
Multiple Target Types
Getting a remote shell on a Windows XP Machine
Picking a Payload
Setting Payload Options
Running the Exploit
Connecting to a Remote Session
Chapter 4 – Meterpreter Shell
 Basic Meterpreter Commands
Core Commands
File System Commands
Network Commands
System Commands
Capturing Webcam Video, Screenshots and Sound
Running Scripts
Playing with Modules - Recovering Deleted Files from Remote System
Part 3 - Information Gathering & Mapping
Chapter 5 – Recon Tools
Recon-NG
Using Recon-NG
Dmitry
Netdiscover
Zenmap
Chapter 6 - Shodan
Why scan your network with Shodan?
Filter Guide
Filter Commands
Combined Searches
Shodan Searches with Metasploit
Part 3 - Attacking Hosts
Chapter 7 – Metasploitable Tutorial - Part One
Installing and Using Metasploitable
Scanning for Targets
Exploiting the Unreal IRC Service
Chapter 8 – Metasploitable - Part Two: Scanners
Using a Scanner
Using Additional Scanners
Scanning a Range of Addresses
Exploiting the Samba Service
Chapter 9 – Windows AV Bypass with Veil
 Installing Veil
Using Veil
Getting a Remote Shell
Chapter 10 – Windows Privilege Escalation by Bypassing UAC
UAC Bypass
Chapter 11 - Packet Captures and Man-in-the-Middle Attacks
Creating a Man-in-the-Middle attack with Arpspoof
Viewing URL information with Urlsnarf
Viewing Captured Graphics with Driftnet
Remote Packet Capture in Metasploit
Wireshark
Xplico
Chapter 12 – Using the Browser Exploitation Framework
BeEF in Action
PART FOUR - Social Engineering
Chapter 13 – Social Engineering
Introduction
Social Engineering Defense
Chapter 14 – The Social Engineering Toolkit
Staring SET
Mass Emailer
SET ’ s Java PYInjector Attack
Social Engineering Toolkit: PowerShell Attack Vector
More Advanced Attacks with SET
Chapter 15 - Subterfuge
Automatic Browser Attack with Subterfuge
Browser Autopwn
PART FIVE - Password Attacks
Chapter 16 – Cracking Simple LM Hashes
Cracking LM passwords Online
Looking up Hashes in Kali
Chapter 17 – Pass the Hash
 Passing the Hash with Psexec
Passing the Hash Toolkit
Defending against Pass the Hash Attacks
Chapter 18 – Mimikatz Plain Text Passwords
Loading the Module
Recovering Hashes and Plain Text Passwords
Chapter 19 – Mimikatz and Utilman
Utilman Login Bypass
Recovering password from a Locked Workstation
Chapter 20 - Keyscan and Lockout Keylogger
Key logging with Meterpreter
Automating KeyScanning with Lockout Keylogger
Chapter 21 - HashCat
Cracking NTLM passwords
Cracking harder passwords
Using a Larger Dictionary File
More advanced cracking
Chapter 22 - Wordlists
Wordlists Included with Kali
Wordlist Generator
Crunch
Download Wordlists from the Web
Chapter 23 – Cracking Linux Passwords
Cracking Linux Passwords
Automating Password Attacks with Hydra
PART SIX – Router and Wi-Fi Attacks
Chapter 24 – Router Attacks
Router Passwords
Routerpwn
Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS)
Attacking WPS with Reaver
Attacking WPS with Fern WiFi Cracker
 Cracking WPS with Wifite
Chapter 25 – Wireless Network Attacks
Wireless Security Protocols
Viewing Wireless Networks with Airmon-NG
Viewing Wi-Fi Packets and Hidden APs in Wireshark
Turning a Wireless Card into an Access Point
Using MacChanger to Change the Address (MAC) of your Wi-Fi Card
Chapter 26 – Fern WIFI Cracker
Using Fern
Chapter 27 – Wi-Fi Testing with WiFite
Using WiFite
More advanced attacks with WiFite
Chapter 28 – Kismet
Scanning with Kismet
Analyzing the Data
Chapter 29 – Easy Creds
Installing Easy-Creds
Creating a Fake AP with SSL strip Capability
Recovering passwords from secure sessions
PART SEVEN - Raspberry Pi
Chapter 30 – Installing Kali on a Raspberry Pi
Pi Power Supplies and Memory Cards
Installing Kali on a Raspberry Pi
Connecting to a “ Headless ” Pi remotely from a Windows system
Viewing Graphical X Windows Programs Remotely through Putty
Chapter 31 – WiFi Pentesting on a Raspberry Pi
Basic Wi-Fi Pentesting using a Raspberry Pi
WEP and WPA/WPA2 Cracking
CHAPTER EIGHT - Defending your Network
Chapter 32 – Network Defense and Conclusion
Patches & Updates
Firewalls and IPS
 Anti-Virus/ Network Security Programs
Limit Services & Authority Levels
Use Script Blocking Programs
Use Long Complex Passwords
Network Security Monitoring
Logging
Educate your users
Scan your Network
Learn Offensive Computer Security
Index
Chapter 1 - Introduction
What is Kali?
Kali is the latest and greatest version of the ever popular Backtrack Linux penetration testing
distribution. The creators of the Backtrack series kept Kali in a format very similar to Backtrack, so
anyone familiar with the older Backtrack platform will feel right at home.
Kali has been re-vamped from the ground up to be the best and most feature rich Ethical Hacking/
Pentesting distribution available. Kali also runs on more hardware devices greatly increasing your
options for computer security penetration testing or “pentesting” systems.
If you are coming to Kali from a Backtrack background, after a short familiarization period you
should find that everything is very similar and your comfort level should grow very quickly.
If you are new to Kali, once you get used to it, you will find an easy to use security testing platform
that includes hundreds of useful and powerful tools to test and help secure your network systems.

Why Use Kali?

Kali includes over 300 security testing tools. A lot of the redundant tools from Backtrack have been
removed and the tool interface streamlined. You can now get to the most used tools quickly as they
appear in a top ten security tool menu. You can also find these same tools and a plethora of others all
neatly categorized in the menu system.
Kali allows you to use similar tools and techniques that a hacker would use to test the security of your
network so you can find and correct these issues before a real hacker finds them.

Tech Note:
Hackers usually perform a combination of steps when attacking
a network. These steps are summarized below:

Recon – Checking out the target using multiple sources –

like intelligence gathering.
Scanning – Mapping out and investigating your network.
Exploitation – Attacking holes found during the scanning
process.
Elevation of Privileges – Elevating a lower access
account to Root, or System Level.
Maintaining Access – Using techniques like backdoors to
keep access to your network.
Covering their Tracks – Erasing logs, and manipulating
files to hide the intrusion.

An Ethical Hacker or Penetration Tester (good guys hired to

find the holes before an attacker does) mimics many of these
 techniques, using parameters and guidelines set up with
corporate management, to find security issues.

They then report their findings to management and assist in

correcting the issues.

We will not be covering every step in the process, but will

show you many of the techniques that are used, and how to
defend against them.

I would think the biggest drive to use Kali over commercial security solutions is the price. Security
testing tools can be extremely costly, Kali is free! Secondly, Kali includes open source versions of
numerous commercial security products, so you could conceivably replace costly programs by simply
using Kali.
All though Kali does includes several free versions of popular software programs that can be
upgraded to the full featured paid versions and used directly through Kali.
There really are no major tool usage differences between Backtrack and Kali. Kali is basically
Backtrack version 6, or the latest version of Backtrack. But it has been completely retooled from the
ground up, making software updates and additions much easier.
In Backtrack updating some programs seemed to break others, in Kali, you update everything using the
Kali update command which keeps system integrity much better.
Simply update Kali and it will pull down the latest versions of the included tools for you. Just a note
of caution, updating tools individually could break Kali, so running the Kali update is always the best
way to get the latest packages for the OS.
I must admit though, some tools that I liked in the original Backtrack are missing in Kali. It is not too
big of a deal as another tool in Kali most likely does the same or similar thing. And then again you
can install other programs you like if needed.
In addition to stand alone and virtual machine instances of Kali, I also use Kali on a Raspberry Pi - a
mini credit card sized ARM based computer. With Kali, you can do almost everything on a Pi that you
could do on a full sized system. In my book I will cover using the PI as a security testing platform
including testing Wireless networks.
Testing networks with a computer you could fit in your pocket, how cool is that?
Though Kali can’t possibly contain all the possible security tools that every individual would prefer,
it contains enough that Kali could be used from beginning to end. Don’t forget that Kali is not just a
security tool, but a full-fledged Linux Operating System. So if your favorite tool runs under Linux, but
is not included, most likely you can install and run it in Kali.

Ethical Hacking Issues

Using Ethical Hacking a security tester basically acts like a hacker. He uses tools and techniques that
a hacker would most likely use to test a target network’s security. The difference is, the penetration
tester is hired by the company to test its security and when done reveals to the leadership team how
they got in and what they can do to plug the holes.
The biggest issue I see in using these techniques is ethics and law. Some security testing techniques
that you can perform with Kali and its included tools are actually illegal to do in some areas. So it is
important that users check their local, State and Federal laws before using Kali.
Also, you may have some users that try to use Kali, a very powerful set of tools, on a network that
they do not have permission to do so. Or they will try to use a technique they learned but may have not
mastered on a production network.
All of these are potential legal and ethical issues.

Scope of this Book

This book focuses on those with beginning to intermediate experience with Backtrack/ Kali. I think it
would also be a good tool for network administrators and non-security IT professionals that are
looking to get into the field.
We will cover everything from a basic overview of Kali to using the included tools to test security on
Windows and Linux based systems. We will cover Social Engineering, Wi-Fi security, using Kali on
a Raspberry Pi, exploiting passwords, basic computer security testing from reconnaissance to finding
& using exploits, and finally securing your systems.

Why did I write this book?

I have written technical articles on Backtrack for several years now, and have helped out with
multiple Backtrack/ Kali books and training series. I get a lot of questions on how to use Kali/
Backtrack, so I decided that it was time to write my own beginners guide book.
My other reason for writing this book is to help get young people interested in the field of computer
security. The US is currently facing a crisis when it comes to young professionals choosing technical
careers and the cyber security field is no different.
The US government is in need of thousands1 of cyber warriors and some industry experts have even
suggested that the US consider hiring security experts2 from other countries to fill in the gap.
Think about that for a minute.
The numbers game is against us also. The US is the number two user of the internet, with 81% of our
population connected. Now consider the fact that China is in the number one spot3 with almost double
the amount of users. And their connected rate is only at about 41%!
Though many think that the US is ranked number one in cyber offense capabilities, our defense is not
ranked that well. With foreign countries making marked advances in cyber security the US needs to
get as many brilliant young people into the field as possible, and they need to do it sooner rather than
later.
Disclaimer
Never try to gain access to or security test a network or computer that you do not have written
permission to do so. Doing so could leave you facing legal prosecution and you could end up in jail.
The information in this book is for educational purposes only.
There are many issues and technologies that you would run into in a live environment that are not
covered. This book only demonstrates some of the most basic tool usage in Kali and should not be
considered as an all-inclusive manual to Ethical hacking or pentesting.
I did not create any of the tools in Kali nor am I a representative of Kali Linux or Offensive Security.
Any errors, mistakes, or tutorial goofs in this book are solely mine and should not reflect on the tool
creators, please let me know where I screwed up so it can be corrected.
Though not mentioned by name, thank you to the Kali developers for creating a spectacular product
and thanks to the individual tool creators, you are all doing an amazing job and are helping secure
systems worldwide!

References
1. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2011/0509/What-US-cybersecurity-needs-a-few-more-good-guys

2. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/jul/10/us-master-hackers-al-qaida

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_Internet_users
Other documents randomly have
different content
 Among the most prominent tokens of this growth of irrational
superstitions was the great tendency of the seventh century towards
image-worship,—Iconoduly as its opponents called the practice. In
direct opposition to early Christian custom, it became common to
ascribe the most strange and magical powers to representations,
whether sculptured or painted, of Our Lord and the Saints. They
Image- were not merely regarded as useful memorials to
worship. guide the piety of believers, but were thought to have
a holiness inherent in themselves, and to be capable of performing
the most astonishing miracles. Heraclius possessed, and carried
about with him as a fetich, a picture which he believed to have been
painted in heaven by angelic hands, and thought it brought him all
manner of luck. The crucifix over the door of the imperial palace was
believed to have used human speech. Even patriarchs and bishops
affirmed that the hand of a celebrated picture of the Virgin in the
capital distilled fragrant balsam. Every church and monastery had its
wonder-working image, and drew no small revenue from pious
offerings to it. The freaks to which image-worship led were often
most grotesque: it was, for example, a well-known practice to make
a favourite picture the god-father of a child in baptism, by scraping
off a little of its paint and mixing it with the baptismal water.
The act for which the name of Leo the Isaurian is best
remembered is the issue of his edict against these puerile
superstitions, and his attempt to put down image-worship all
through his realm. Leo was not only a man of strong common sense,
but he was sprung from those lands on the Mohammedan border
where Christians had the best opportunity of comparing the gross
and material adoration of their co-religionists for stones and paint,
with the severe spiritual worship of the followers of Islam. The
Moslem was always taunting the Christian with serving idols, and the
taunt found too much justification in many practices of the vulgar.
Thinking men like Leo were moved by the Moslem’s sneer into a
horror of the superstitious follies of their contemporaries. They
Iconoclas fortified themselves by the view that to make graven
m. or painted representations of Our Lord savoured of
heresy, because it laid too much stress on His humanity as opposed
to His divinity. Such an idea was no new thing: it had often been
mooted among the Eastern Christians, though more often by
schismatics than by Catholics. Of Leo’s own orthodoxy, however,
there was no doubt: even his enemies could not convict him of
swerving in the least from the faith: it was only on this matter of
image-worship that he differed from them. Wherever he plucked
down the crucifix he set up the plain cross—on the standards of his
army, on the gates of his palace, on his money, on his imperial
robes. It was purely to the anthropomorphic representation of Our
Lord and to the over-reverence for images of saints that he
objected.
Leo was no mere rough soldier: his parents were people of some
wealth, and he had entered the army as an imperial aide-de-camp
(spathiarius), not as one of the rank and file.[45] It is probable
therefore that he was sufficiently educated to object to image-
worship on rational and philosophic grounds, not from the mere
unthinking prejudice picked up from Saracens or heretics. This much
is certain, that from the moment that he declared his policy he found
the greatest support among the higher officers of the civil service
and the army. Educated laymen were as a rule favourable to his
views: the mass of the soldiery followed him, and the eastern
provinces as a whole acquiesced in his reformation. On the other
hand, he found his chief opponents among the monks, whose
interests were largely bound up with image-worship, and among the
lower classes, who were blindly addicted to it. The European themes
were as a whole opposed to him: the further west the province the
more Iconodulic were its tendencies. Of the whole empire Italy was
the part where Leo’s views found the least footing.
45. The story that he began life as a poor huckster travelling about with a mule
is one of the many inventions of his enemies the monks.
Leo began his crusade against image-worship in 726, eight years
after his great victory over the Saracens. The empire was by this
time quieted down and reorganised; two rebellions had also been
crushed, one under a certain Basil in Italy, the other under the ex-
emperor Artemius Anastasius, who had tried to resume the crown by
the aid of the Bulgarians. The heads of Basil and Artemius had
fallen, and no more trouble from rebellion was expected. Leo’s edict
forbade all image-worship as irreverent and superstitious, and
ordered the removal of all holy statues and the white-washing of all
Leo’s holy pictures on church walls. From the very first the
Iconoclasti emperor’s commands met with a lively resistance.
c Edict. When his officials began to remove the great crucifix
over the palace gate, a mob fell upon them and beat them to death
with clubs. Leo sent out troops to clear the streets, and many of the
rioters were slain. This evil beginning was followed by an equally
disastrous sequel. All over the empire the bulk of the clergy declared
against the emperor: in many provinces they began to preach open
sedition. The Pope, as we have already seen when telling the fate of
Italy, put himself at the head of the movement, and sent most
insulting letters to Constantinople. In 727 Rome refused obedience
to the edict, and what was of more immediate danger, the theme of
Hellas rose in open rebellion. The garrison-troops and the populace,
incited by the preaching of fanatical monks, joined to proclaim a
certain Cosmas emperor. They fitted out a fleet to attack
Constantinople, but it was defeated, and the rebel emperor was
taken prisoner and beheaded. It is acknowledged, however, even by
Leo’s enemies, that he treated the bulk of the prisoners and the
rebel theme with great mildness. Indeed, he seldom punished
disobedience to his edict with death: stripes and imprisonment were
the more frequent rewards of those whom the Iconodules styled
heroes and confessors of the true faith. Leo was determined that his
edict should be carried out, but he was not by nature a persecutor:
it was as rioters or rebels, not as image-worshippers, that his
enemies were punished, just as in the reign of Elizabeth of England
the Jesuit suffered, not as a Papist, but as a traitor. Leo deposed the
aged patriarch Germanus for refusing to work with him, but did him
no further harm.[46] In general it was by promoting Iconoclasts, not
by maltreating Iconodules, that he worked.
46. The stories of the sufferings of Germanus are late inventions of Iconodule
writers.
The last thirteen years of Leo’s reign (727-40) were on the whole
a time of success for the emperor. He succeeded in getting his edict
enforced over the greater part of the empire, in spite of some open
and more secret resistance; only Italy defied him. From the
reconquest of Rome he was kept back by the necessity of providing
for the defence of the East, for in 726 the caliph Hisham—hearing no
doubt of Leo’s domestic troubles—commenced once more to invade
Wars with the Asiatic themes. In 727 a Saracen host pushed
the forward as far as Nicaea, where it was repelled and
Saracen. forced to retire. There were less formidable invasions
in 730, 732, and 737-8, but none led to any serious loss, and the
imperial boundary stood firmly fixed in the passes of the Taurus. The
Saracen war practically ended with a great victory won by Leo in
person at Acroinon, in the Anatolic theme, where an army of 20,000
Arab raiders was cut to pieces with the loss of all its chiefs. The
house of the Ommeyad Caliphs was already verging towards its
decline: it never again prepared any expedition approaching the
strength of the great armament of Moslemah, which Leo had so
effectually turned back in 718, and its later sovereigns were not of
the type of those fanatical conquerors who had cut the boundaries
of the empire short in the preceding century. Leo had effectually
staved off any imminent danger to eastern Christendom from
Moslem conquest for three full centuries.
Leo was succeeded by his son Constantine, fifth of that name
according to the usual reckoning, sixth if the grandson of Heraclius
be given his true name, and not the erroneous title of Constans II.
The second of the Isaurian emperors, however, is less known by the
numeral affixed to his name than by the insulting epithet of
Copronymus, which his Iconodulic enemies bestowed on him—
showing thereby their own bad taste rather than any unworthiness
on the part of their sovereign.
Constantine was a young man of twenty-two at the moment of his
accession. He had long acted as his father’s colleague, and was
thoroughly trained in Leo’s methods of administration, and
Constantin indoctrinated with his Iconoclastic views. He seems,
e while possessing a great measure of his father’s
Copronymu energy and ability, to have been inferior to him in two
s, 740-75.
respects. Leo had combined caution with courage,
and knew how to exercise moderation. Constantine was bold to
excess, did not understand half-measures or toleration, and carried
through every scheme with a high hand. Moreover, while Leo’s
private life had been blameless and even severe, Constantine was a
votary of pleasure, fond of pomp and shows, devoted to musical and
theatrical entertainments, and sometimes lapsing into debauchery.
Hence it is easy to see why he has been dealt with by the chroniclers
of the next century in an even harsher spirit than his father, and is
represented as a monster of cruelty and vice.
Constantine was no sooner seated on the throne than he showed
that he was determined to continue his father’s policy. He was at
once assailed by the rebellion of the Iconodulic faction: they induced
his brother-in-law Artavasdus, general of the Obsequian theme, to
seize the capital, and proclaim himself emperor, while Constantine
was absent on an expedition against the Saracens. All the European
themes, where the image-breakers were hated, did homage to
Artavasdus. But the Anatolic and Thracesian themes, the heart of
Asia Minor, remained true to the son of Leo. He showed his energy
and ability by beating the sons of Artavasdus in two battles, and
besieging the rebel in Constantinople. When the city was well-nigh
reduced by famine, Artavasdus fled, but he was caught and brought
before Constantine. The emperor ordered him and his sons to be
blinded, and confined them in a monastery. Their chief adherents
were beheaded (742).
This sanguinary lesson to the Iconodulic party seems to have
cowed them to such an extent that they did not raise another open
rebellion in the long reign of Constantine (740-775). But they
adhered as fully as ever to their faith: nothing is so difficult to
eradicate as a well-rooted superstition, and Constantine’s strong
hand was better fitted to cow than to persuade. As the years of his
reign passed by, and he found image-worship practised in secret by
thousands of conscientious votaries, the emperor grew more and
more determined to uproot it. After a time he resolved to call in the
spiritual sanction to aid the secular arm: in 753 he summoned a
general council to meet at Constantinople, but it was œcumenical
only in name. The Pope replied by anathemas of contumely to the
summons to appear; the patriarchs of Antioch, Jerusalem, and
Alexandria, safe under the protection of the caliph, denied their
Council of presence. But there assembled an imposing body of
Constantin three hundred and thirty-eight bishops, presided over
ople, 753. by the Constantinopolitan patriarch, Constantine of
Sylaeum, and by Theodosius, metropolitan of Ephesus, son of the
emperor Tiberius II. This council committed itself fully to Iconoclastic
doctrine; it proscribed all representations of Our Lord as
blasphemous snares, for endeavouring to express both His human
and His divine nature in the mere likeness of a man, and thereby
obscuring His divinity in His humanity. At the same time it
condemned the worship of images of saints, because all adoration
except that paid to the Godhead savoured of heathenism and
anthropolatry. The emperor had other scruples of his own, on which
he did not press the council to deliver a decision; he denied the
intercessory powers of the Virgin, and scrupled to prefix the epithet
ἅγιος, ‘holy,’ to the names of even the greatest saints. He spoke, for
example, of ‘Peter the Apostle,’ not of ‘the holy Peter.’ On these awful
depths of free thought the Iconodules of his own and the succeeding
generation wasted expressions of horror, worthy to be employed on
a Herod or a Judas.
Armed with the decree of the council of Constantinople, the
emperor proceeded, during the remainder of his reign, to indulge in
what was a true religious persecution, for he pursued the image-
worshippers as heretics, not as rebels or rioters. He inflicted the
death-penalty in a few cases, but the majority of his victims were
flogged, mutilated, pilloried, or banished. The most obstinate
supporters of Iconoduly were found among the monks, who not only
resisted themselves, but never ceased to use their vast influence
over the mob in order to turn it against the emperor. After a time
Constantine resolved to make an end of the monastic system, as
Persecutio being the strongest bulwark of superstition. To uproot
n of a habit of life founded on the practice of centuries,
monks. and highly revered by the multitude was of course an
impossibility. Monasteries can only be suppressed, as they were at
the Reformation, if the nation sides with the sovereign.
Nevertheless, Constantine drove out and harried a vast number of
monks. He held that they were over-numerous, that they were men
who shirked the ordinary duties of the citizen, and that their
profession was a cloak for selfishness and sloth. He aimed not only
at breaking up the cloisters, but at secularising their inmates. On
one occasion he had all the monks and nuns of the Thracesian
theme assembled, and offered them their choice between marriage
or banishment to Cyprus. The majority chose the latter alternative,
and became in the eyes of their contemporaries confessors of the
true faith. On another occasion he exhibited in the Hippodrome a
procession of unfrocked monks, each holding by the hand an
unfrocked nun whom he was to marry—the Iconodule writers, as
might be expected, call the backsliding nuns ‘harlots.’ The deserted
monasteries were either pulled down for building materials or turned
into barracks.
But it must not be supposed that Constantine’s activity was
entirely engrossed in persecuting the worshippers of images. The
thirty-five years of his reign were a period of considerable military
glory, and the emperor, who always headed his own armies, took the
field for more than a dozen campaigns. In Asia the fall of the
Ommeyad Caliphs, accompanied by savage civil wars among the
Saracens (750), offered an unrivalled opportunity for extending the
Wars of bounds of the empire. Constantine pushed beyond the
Constantin Anti-Taurus as far as the Euphrates; in 745 he
e. occupied the district of Commagene, and transported
all its Christian inhabitants to Thrace: in 751 he took Melitene on the
Euphrates, and the great Armenian fortress of Theodosiopolis. Part
of these conquests were afterwards recovered by the first Abbaside
Caliph, Abdallah Al-Saffah, but the rest remained to the empire as a
trophy of Constantine’s wars. Several Saracen attempts to invade
Cappadocia and Cyprus were driven back with great slaughter, and
in general it may be stated that Constantine effectually protected
Asia Minor from the Mohammedan sword, and that the country
began to grow again both in wealth and in population.
Nor was his work less useful in Europe. He completely reduced to
order the Slavonic tribes south of the Balkan, both in Thrace and
Macedonia: they had got out of hand during the troubles of the
years 605-718, and required to be subdued anew. Constantine
carefully fortified the defiles of the Balkans, which communicate with
the valley of the Danube, garrisoning once more the ruined castles
which Justinian had built there. This advance northward brought him
into hostile contact with the Bulgarians, who had long been
accustomed to harry both the Slavonic and the Roman districts of
Thrace and Macedon, and could not brook to be walled in by the
new line of forts. Constantine waged three successful wars with the
Bulgarians; the first, lasting from 755 to 762, ended with a great
victory at Anchialus, after which king Baian sued for peace, and
obtained it on promising to keep his subjects from raiding across the
Balkans. The second war occupied the years 764-773. Constantine
crossed the Balkans, wasted Bulgaria, slew the new king Toktu near
the Danube, and was preparing in the next year to complete the
conquest of the country, when his whole fleet and army were
destroyed by a storm in the Black Sea (765). Long and indecisive
bickering on the line of the Balkans followed, and peace was made
in 773 on the old terms. The last Bulgarian war, provoked by an
attempt of king Telerig to invade Macedonia in 774-5, was notable
for a great victory at Lithosoria, but Constantine died while leading
his army northward, and his successes had no permanent result. The
Bulgarians were not subdued by him, but they were kept at bay, and
so tamed that they were compelled to leave Thrace alone, and
content themselves with defending their own Danubian plains from
the attacks of the East-Romans.
 The Saracen and Bulgarian being driven away from the frontier,
we are not surprised to hear that the empire flourished under
Constantin Constantine. He planted many colonies on the waste
e’s home lands of the borders, settling the emigrant Christians
governmen of Armenia in Thrace, and many Slavonic and
t.
Bulgarian refugees in Bithynia. We are told that
agriculture prospered in his time, so much that sixty measures of
wheat sold for a gold solidus. He exterminated brigandage, and
made the roads safe for merchants. He furnished Constantinople
with a new water-supply by restoring the aqueduct of Valens, broken
more than a hundred and fifty years before. When the capital had
been devastated by a great plague in 746-7, he more than replaced
the lost thousands of its population by new settlers from Hellas and
the islands, for whom employment was found by the increasing
commerce which followed the growth of internal prosperity. When he
died in 775, aged fifty-seven, he left a full treasury, a loyal and
devoted army, and a well-organised realm.
Constantine was succeeded by his eldest son Leo IV., often called
Leo the Chazar, because his mother Irene had been a Chazar
princess. Leo had acted as his father’s colleague for many years, and
carried on Constantine’s policy, though with a less harsh hand. In
Reign of the beginning of his reign he showed toleration to the
Leo IV., Iconodules, but when they commenced to raise their
775-80. heads again he resumed his father’s persecuting
manner, flogging and banishing many prominent image-worshippers.
He did not, however, object to monks, as Constantine had done, but
allowed them to rebuild their convents, and even promoted some of
them to bishoprics. It is probable that his resumption of persecution
in 777 was connected with the discovery of a conspiracy against him
in which his own brothers Nicephorus and Christophorus had
leagued themselves with the discontented party. The treacherous
Caesars were pardoned by their brother, and their associates
suffered banishment and not death.
Leo continued his father’s war with the Saracens. In 778 his
armies invaded Commagene, defeated a great Saracen host in the
open field, and brought back under their protection a great body of
Syrian Christians, who were settled as colonists in Thrace. The caliph
Mehdy replied in the next year by an invasion of the Anatolic theme:
his army forced its way as far as Dorylaeum, but retired in disorder,
and much harassed by the Romans, after failing to take that place.
Leo was of a sickly habit of body, and died after a short reign of
five years, in 780, before he had attained the age of thirty-two. He
left the throne to his son Constantine VI.,[47] for whom the empress
Irene was to act as regent, as the boy was only nine years of age.
Leo’s early death was a fatal misfortune alike for the Iconoclastic
cause and the Isaurian dynasty. The empress Irene, though she had
succeeded in concealing the fact during her husband’s life, was a
fervent worshipper of images, and the moment that the reins of
power fell into her hands, set herself to reverse the imperial policy of
Constantin the last sixty years. She began by putting an end to
e VI. and the repression of the Iconodules, and then gradually
Irene. displaced the old ministers of state and governors of
the themes by creatures of her own. This led to a plot against her;
the conspirators proposed to crown Nicephorus, the eldest of her
brothers-in-law, but they were discovered and banished, while all the
five brothers of the deceased emperor were forcibly made priests, to
disqualify them from seizing the throne.
47. Or seventh, if Constantinus-Constans is counted.
When the patriarch Paul died in 784, Irene replaced him by
Tarasius, a fervent image-worshipper, and then ventured to call a
general council at Nicaea, to which she invited pope Hadrian at
Rome, and the Patriarchs of the East, to send delegates. Under the
influence of the empress the council, by a large majority, declared
the lawfulness of making representations of Our Lord and the Saints,
and bade men pay not divine worship (λατρεία), but adoration and
reverence (προσκύνησις) to them. The recalcitrant Iconoclastic
Restoratio bishops were excommunicated. The doings of the
n of image- council caused a mutiny of the Imperial guard in
worship,
Constantinople, for the greater part of the army still
785.
adhered to the views of the Isaurian emperors. But Irene succeeded
in steering through the troubled waters, put down the mutiny, and
retained her power.
Meanwhile the reign of a child and a woman proved disastrous to
the empire. The Slavs of the Balkans burst into revolt, and the
Saracens invaded Asia Minor. The want of an emperor to head the
army was grievously felt, and Haroun-al-Raschid, the son of the
caliph Mehdy, ravaged the whole Anatolic and Obsequian themes as
far as the Bosphorus. Irene felt herself unable to cope with the
situation, and bought a peace by an annual payment of 70,000 solidi
(784). Soon after the Bulgarian king declared war, and ravaged
Thrace after slaying the general of the Thracian theme in battle.
Among these disasters Constantine VI. grew up to manhood, but
his mother, who had acquired a great taste for power, and feared to
see her son reverse her religious policy, long refused to give him any
Constantin share in the government. She even made the army
e seizes swear never to receive her son as sole emperor as
power. long as she should live. The young emperor, after
chafing for some time in his state of tutelage, took matters into his
own hands. In his twenty-first year he repaired to the camp of the
Anatolic troops, and there proclaimed himself of age, and sole ruler
of the State. He banished his mother’s favourites, and confined her
for some months to her own apartments in the palace.
When he had firmly seized the helm of power, Constantine was
weak enough to take his mother again as his colleague on the
throne, and to associate her name with his in all imperial decrees.
The ambitious and unnatural Irene repaid his confidence by
scheming against him. She had grown so fond of power that she had
resolved to win it back at all costs. Constantine was, like his
ancestors, a warlike and energetic prince. He won several successes
over the Saracens, and then engaged in a Bulgarian war. His
popularity was first shaken by a fearful defeat at the hands of the
Bulgarian king Cardam, by which he lost much of his influence with
the army. Shortly afterwards he entered into a fierce struggle with
the Patriarch and the clergy, having divorced, in spite of their
opposition, a wife whom his mother had forced upon him in early
youth, and espoused Theodota, on whom his own affections were
Irene set. Knowing that the Church was wroth with
dethrones Constantine for this outbreak of self-will, and that the
her son, army no longer loved him as before, the wicked Irene
797.
determined to strike a blow against her son. She
suborned some of the young emperor’s attendants to seize their
master, and, when he fell into her hands, had his eyes put out. He
was then immured in a monastery, where he survived for more than
twenty years.
It was by a mere palace-conspiracy, not by an open rising, that
the unnatural mother had dethroned and blinded her son. It is,
therefore, all the more extraordinary to find that she was able to
cling to power for more than five years, in spite of the horror which
her act had caused. The gratitude of the image-worshippers to her,
for having restored to them the power of practising their
superstition, partly explains, but does not at all excuse the impunity
which she enjoyed after her cruel deed.
Irene’s five years of power (797-802) were disastrous at home and
abroad. Her court was swayed by two greedy eunuchs, Aetius and
Stauracius, on whom she lavished all the highest offices. Their
miserable quarrels with each other are the chief things recorded in
the annals of her internal government. Meanwhile the frontiers were
overrun by the armies of Haroun-al-Raschid. The Saracens harried
the Anatolic and Thracesian themes, and forced their way as far as
Ephesus. Peace was only granted when Irene consented to pay a
large annual tribute to the Caliph.
Deposition In 802 the cup of Irene’s iniquities was full. To put
of Irene, an end to anarchy abroad and within, a number of the
802. chief officers of State, headed by the treasurer
Nicephorus, seized her by night, and shut her up in a nunnery. No
one struck a blow in her defence, for she was loved by no one, not
even by the Iconodules, for whom she had done so much.
Nicephorus was proclaimed as her successor, and ascended the
throne without any disturbance.
Thus ended the house of the Isaurians, after eighty-five years of
rule. They had effected much for the empire; for the disasters of
Irene’s short reign had not sufficed to undo the solid work of Leo III.
and Constantine V. The boundaries were safer, the population
greater, the wealth largely increased, the armies more efficient than
at the commencement of the century. Even the Iconoclastic
persecutions, though they had failed to crush superstition, had done
some good in rooting out the grosser vagaries of image-worship.
The Iconoclastic party still subsisted, and was strong in the army
and civil service; we shall see it once more in power during the ninth
century.
 CHAPTER XIX

PIPPIN THE SHORT—WARS OF THE FRANKS AND

LOMBARDS

741-768

Mayoralty of Pippin and Carloman—Their successful wars—Boniface reforms the

Frankish church—Abdication of Carloman—Pippin dethrones Childebert III. and
assumes the royal title—Quarrel of Aistulf and Pope Stephen—The Pope calls
the Franks into Italy—Pippin twice subdues Aistulf—The Exarchate given to
the Papacy—Martyrdom of St. Boniface—Conquest of Narbonne—Long
struggle with the dukes of Aquitaine—Death of Pippin.

The events which immediately followed the death of Charles Martel

showed clearly enough that the house of St. Arnulf must still depend
on the power of the sword to guard its ascendency, and that it could
only continue to rule by continuing to produce a series of able chiefs.
It was fortunate for the Frankish realm that Pippin and Carloman
were both men of sense and vigour, though perhaps they did not
attain to the full stature of their father’s greatness. Not less
fortunate was it that, unlike the kings of the Merovingian house,
they dwelt together in amity and brotherly love, and undertook
every scheme in common.
The moment that Charles was dead troubles broke out on every
hand. Grifo, the younger brother of the two mayors, declared himself
wronged in the partition of the kingdoms, seized Laon, and began to
gather an army of Neustrian malcontents. Theudebald, the brother
of the duke of Suabia, who had been overthrown in 730, raised the
Alamanni in revolt in Elsass and the Black Forest. Hunold, duke of
Aquitaine, disclaimed the suzerainty of the Frankish crown, while the
Saxons refused the tribute which had been laid upon them, and
invaded Hesse.
The whole of 742 was spent by Pippin and Carloman in dealing
with the storm which had burst upon them. They began with
crushing their unruly brother, captured him, and sent him captive to
a fortress in the Ardennes. Next they marched against Hunold of
Aquitaine, and harried the southern bank of the Loire, but the duke
retreated southward without fighting, and other duties called away
the two mayors before he was subdued. It was now the dangerous
rising in Suabia, in the very midst of their realm, which demanded
Early their attention. They descended upon the Alamanni
campaigns with irresistible force, and soon subdued the whole
of Pippin. land as far as the Bavarian frontier. But there was yet
more fighting to be done, and, ere they finished their task, the two
mayors had determined to legalise their somewhat anomalous
position as regents for a non-existent sovereign. They sought out
and crowned Childerich III., the last of the Merovingians, as feeble a
shadow as his long-deceased kinsman, Theuderich IV. So, after an
interregnum of six years, the Franks had once more a king.
It was three years before the authority of Carloman and Pippin
had been vindicated in every corner of the realm, but at last
Aquitaine had acknowledged once more its vassal obligations, the
Saxons had been chastised, and an attempt of Bavaria to make itself
independent had been crushed. The struggle had not been without
its difficulties, and the two mayors had been so hard pressed for
resources, that they had followed in their father’s steps by laying
hands on Church property, compelling bishops and abbeys to devote
a certain portion of their landed estates to the support of the war-
expenses of the crown. Other dealings with the Church had been as
unpopular though less unorthodox; the Frankish clergy were often
irregular in their lives, lax in their spiritual duties, and given over to
all manner of secular pursuits. The mayors set the stern missionary
 St. enthusiast Boniface to reform these evils. At the great
Boniface synod of 745, to which all the prelates of both
reforms the Frankish realms were bidden, the great archbishop
Church.
entered into a campaign against clerical abuses of all
sorts. At his behest canons were passed against immoral life,
pluralities, the granting of benefices to unordained persons, the
disobedience of bishops to their metropolitans, the light assumption
and rejection of the monastic habit and vow, and the favouring of
heresy. Boniface had also much trouble with those who, headed by
the Irish missionary bishop Clement, refused obedience to the
Roman See, a fault which the great archbishop regarded as no less
heinous than the open profession of unorthodoxy. In all his doings
he received the zealous support of Carloman and Pippin.
Ecclesiastical reform within was not unaccompanied by ecclesiastical
extension without. In these troubled years of the two mayors,
Boniface portioned out the newly-converted lands of central
Germany into the three bishoprics of Würzburg, Erfurt, and
Buraburg, to serve respectively as sees for Franconia, Thuringia, and
Hesse. At the same time was founded his great abbey of Fulda, the
centre of piety and learning in Transrhenane Germany during the
succeeding age.
Carloman To the great surprise of all his contemporaries, the
abdicates, mayor Carloman, on the completion of his task of re-
747. establishing order in Austrasia, laid down his sword,
and assumed the monk’s gown, in the year 747. ‘The causes no man
knew, but it would seem that he was truly moved by a desire for the
contemplative life and for the love of God.’ It was certainly no
weakness or desire for inglorious ease that led him to follow the
example of his ancestor St. Arnulf, and seek out a hermitage. He
passed into Italy, obtained the blessing of Pope Zacharias, and built
himself a cell on Mount Soracte, in the Sabine hills. We shall hear of
his name but once again, seven years after his abdication.
By his brother’s retirement Pippin became mayor of Austrasia as
well as of Neustria. He had one more struggle to wage ere all things
were fully beneath his hand. In 747 his brother Grifo escaped from
prison, and fled to Saxony, from whence he tried to stir up trouble.
When Odilo duke of Bavaria died, he seized that duchy, claiming it in
right of his mother, Swanhildis, who was of the ducal stock. Pippin
soon drove him out, and he was constrained to flee to Aquitaine.
Bavaria fell to Tassilo, the son of the late duke.
After the rebellion of Grifo we read in the Frankish annals the
unusual entry, that ‘the whole land had peace for two years’ (749-
50). Being now in complete possession of the Frankish realm, and
fearing no foe from within or from without, Pippin took the step
which must always have been present in the brains of his ancestors,
since the day when the over-hasty Grimoald had endeavoured to
seize the royal power in 656. Warned by Grimoald’s fate, Pippin the
Younger and Charles Martel had scrupulously refrained from claiming
the title of king, and had religiously kept up the series of puppet-
princes of the old Merovingian stock. Their descendant was now
determined to bring the farce to its end, and would not even wait for
the death of the imbecile Childerich III., whose vain name had for the
last ten years served to head Frankish charters and rescripts. Early
in 751 the national council of the whole realm was summoned, and
eagerly approved of the removal of Childerich and the election of
Pippin as king. To bestow a still greater show of legal authority on
the change, Pippin then sent an embassy to Rome to obtain the
approval of the Pope. Its leader, Burkhard, bishop of Würzburg,
demanded of pope Zacharias ‘Whether it was well or not to keep to
Pippin kings who had no royal power?’ The pontiff, whose
dethrones chief desire was to win aid against the Lombards by
Childerich flattering the ambition of Pippin, made the answer
III.
that was expected of him. ‘It is better,’ he said, ‘that
the man who has the real power should also have the title of king,
rather than the man who has the mere title and no real power.’ On
the receipt of the Pope’s encouraging message, which he regarded
as freeing him from any religious obligation resting on oaths sworn
to the unfortunate Childerich, Pippin once more summoned the
Great Council of the Franks to meet. It assembled at Soissons in
October or November 751, and, in the ancient royal city of Neustria,
Pippin was first acclaimed as king, and lifted on the shield, after the
ancient Teutonic custom, by the unanimous voice of the whole
nation, and then anointed, as befitted a Christian sovereign, by the
great Austrasian archbishop Boniface. Childerich was shorn of his
regal locks, and sent to spend the remainder of his days in an
obscure monastery, instead of the hardly less obscure royal manor in
which he had hitherto dwelt.
Thus had the house of St. Arnulf at last reached the summit of its
ambition, and the Frankish race once more obtained a king whose
busy brain and strong right hand could make a reality of the title
which for four generations had been but a vain name, while borne
Pippin as by the last effete Merovings. Raised on the shield by
king, 752- the Austrasian counts and dukes, anointed by the
768. Apostle of Germany, blessed by the Roman pontiff,
Pippin went forth conquering and to conquer, into lands where the
Frankish banner had not been seen for many generations. Charles
Martel vindicated the old frontier of the realm, his son was destined
to extend its bounds into regions where no Frankish king had ever
obtained a permanent footing.
The doings of Pippin the Short during the seventeen years of his
kingly rule fall into three main heads. First and most important are
his dealings with the popes and the kings of the Lombards, leading
to his two great campaigns in Italy. Of secondary moment are his
conquests from the Saracens and the Aquitanian dukes in the south
of Gaul. His wars against the Saxons are of minor importance only.
In giving his blessing to the accession of king Pippin pope
Zacharias had kept in view the aid which the Franks might grant him
in his quarrels with his Lombard neighbours. Zacharias died ere he
had time to demand a return for his complaisance, but his successor
Stephen soon claimed the gratitude of the newly-crowned monarch
The of the Franks. The old Lombard king Liutprand had
Lombards died in 744, and his nephew Hildebrand, who
and the succeeded him, had held the throne for no more than
Papacy.
a few months. The Great Council of the Lombards
deposed him for vicious incompetency, and elected in his place
Ratchis, duke of Friuli. The new king, a man of mild and pious
disposition, kept the peace which Liutprand had made with the
Papacy till 749, when, for reasons to us unknown, he advanced to
attack Perugia, one of the few places in Italy which still adhered to
the empire. Pope Zacharias visited his camp to plead with him in
behalf of peace, with the unexpected result that Ratchis not only
raised the siege, but laid down his crown and retired into a
monastery, stricken, like his contemporary Carloman, with the
sudden horror of secular things which occasionally fell upon the
Teutonic monarchs of the seventh and eighth century.
Ratchis was succeeded by his brother Aistulf, an ambitious and
restless monarch, who raised the Lombard kingdom to its widest
territorial extent by conquering the long-coveted Ravenna. When he
Aistulf attacked the shrunken Exarchate it received no help
takes from Constantine Copronymus, who detested his
Ravenna, Italian subjects as obstinate image-worshippers, and
752.
was much occupied at the moment by his Saracen
war. Ravenna fell with hardly any resistance, and Eutychius, the last
exarch, fled to Sicily. Aistulf then busied himself in reducing the
independent duchy of Benevento to vassalage. His next project was
to annex the towns of the ‘ducatus Romanus’—the valley of the
lower Tiber—and to make the Pope his liegeman. Although he had
concluded a forty-years’ peace with the Papacy, yet, in 752-53, he
was hovering about the neighbourhood of Rome, and occupying the
Umbrian and Sabine borders of the ‘patrimony of St. Peter.’ At last
his ambassadors appeared before Stephen II. to demand the homage
of Rome, and the payment of an annual tribute. After trying in vain
to scare off Aistulf, first by the terrors of excommunication, and then
by empty menaces of applying for aid to Constantinople, which the
Lombard derided, Stephen bethought himself of the debt of
gratitude which the Frankish king owed to the Holy See. After
ascertaining that his presence and demands would not be
unacceptable to king Pippin, he left Rome in October 753, and, after
making one more appeal to the Lombard king to grant him peace
and independence, crossed the Alps, and appeared before the
Frankish Court at Ponthion, near Bar-le-Duc.
Pope His reception was all that he could have wished.
Stephen Pippin met him three miles from the town, knelt
invites before him on the roadside, and walked beside his
Pippin to
Italy. stirrup to the palace gate, leading his palfrey by the
bridle, though the month was January, and the snow
lay on the ground. In the royal chapel, when the court was
assembled, Stephen, ‘with many tears and groans,’ laid before the
king the lamentable state of the Church, and besought him to bring
peace and salvation to the cause of St. Peter and the Roman State.
Whereupon Pippin swore an oath that he would grant him all he
asked, and use every endeavour to put him in possession of the
exarchate of Ravenna, as well as all the cities which belonged by
right to the Roman republic. It was to no purpose that an
unexpected guest appeared in Gaul to beg Pippin to swerve from his
purpose. This was his brother Carloman, who left his Sabine
monastery to pray Pippin not to bring down the horrors of war upon
Italy—a request which seemed so strange to the Church historians of
the day, that they could only suppose that his mind had been
overpowered by diabolic delusions, or that he was yielding to dread
of the wrath of Aistulf. Pippin refused to listen to him, and bade him
quit the court, and take up his residence at Vienne, where he soon
afterwards died.
Meanwhile the Great Council of the Frankish realms was
summoned to meet at Cérisy-sur-Oise, and there the king
announced to his assembled counts and dukes that he proposed to
make war on the Lombards, in order to vindicate the rights of the
Holy See. Won over by their king’s zeal, and by the great gifts which
Stephen II. distributed among them, the Franks eagerly clamoured
for war. In return for their goodwill the Pope solemnly crowned
Pippin, his wife Bertha, and his young sons, Charles and Carloman,
and pronounced a curse on any one who should ever remove the
house of Pippin from the Frankish throne.
 In the summer of 754 the hosts of the Franks choked the
Savoyard passes with their multitudes, and prepared to force their
way down into Italy. Aistulf had mustered his army, and was ready
to meet them. In the narrow gorge of the Dora, hard by Susa, he fell
on the Frankish vanguard; but he suffered such a crushing defeat
that he had to fall back on Pavia without striking a second blow.
Pippin followed, wasting Piedmont with fire and sword, and soon
Pippin beleaguered Aistulf in his royal stronghold. Then, with
subdues an alacrity which his conqueror should have found
Aistulf, somewhat suspicious, Aistulf offered terms of peace.
754.
He would do personal homage to Pippin, give him
hostages, and engage to restore to the Roman See all that was its
due. So a treaty was signed, Stephen was reconducted in triumph to
Rome, and Pippin returned beyond the Alps, proud that he had
added Lombardy to the list of states dependent on the Frankish
crown.
On his homeward journey the king heard of the death of the great
archbishop of Mainz, the apostle of Transrhenane Germany. Zealous
even in extreme old age for the conversion of every subject of the
Frankish realm, Boniface had started on a missionary journey to East
Friesland, where paganism still held sway. As he lay encamped at
Dokkum a great multitude of wild heathen, indignant at the invasion
of their last retreat, fell upon him and slew him with all his
Martyrdom companions. His death was not long unavenged; the
of St. Christian majority of the Frisians took arms, put down
Boniface. their pagan brethren, slew many thousands of them
and compelled the rest to submit to baptism. By his martyr-death
the great archbishop completed the conversion of the land for which
he had striven so much during his lifetime. He was buried at Fulda in
Hesse, where a great abbey was reared over his shrine and became
the centre of Christian life in the Hessian lands whose apostle he
had been. It would have afforded the keenest pleasure to Boniface if
he could have witnessed the zeal with which his patron Pippin went
forward with the task of reducing the Frankish clergy to canonical
discipline. In the year which followed his martyrdom the Synod of
Verneuil passed the most stringent laws against evil-living, simony,
the practice of secular avocations, and the other failings of the
clergy against which the archbishop had raged in his lifetime.
The easy promises which king Aistulf had made when he was
beleaguered in Pavia had never been intended for keeping. When
the Franks had withdrawn from Italy the king found pretexts for
delay, and did not restore to Stephen II. a single one of the Sabine or
Latin cities which he had occupied in 753, still less the Exarchate of
Ravenna, which the Pope had impudently asked and fondly hoped to
Aistulf receive. In the winter of 755-6 he took still more
attacks unmistakeable steps of hostility; descending the valley
Rome. of the Tiber he suddenly laid siege to Rome. The walls
of Aurelian were still too strong to be stormed, but three months of
blockade brought the citizens near to yielding. The news that king
Pippin had once more taken arms restored courage to Pope and
people, and ere long Aistulf was forced to raise the siege and hasten
north to defend Lombardy. Once more the Franks forced the defiles
of the Cenis, and cut to pieces a Lombard force which strove to stop
the way. For the second time Aistulf was forced into Pavia,
beleaguered, and compelled to sue for peace. This time he was
given harder terms. Pippin demanded one-third of the royal hoard of
the Lombards, an annual tribute, a larger body of hostages, and the
instant surrender of the Exarchate. The unwilling Lombard was
forced to concede everything; Frankish envoys received and handed
over to the Pope, the cities of Ravenna, Rimini, Pesaro, Forli, Urbino,
Pippin and Sinigaglia, with all their dependencies. Their keys
gives the were brought to Rome and laid in triumph on the
Exarchate sepulchre of St. Peter. Thus did the Pope become an
to the
Pope. important secular prince, by taking over the old
Byzantine dominions in central Italy. It would seem
that the theory by which he justified this usurpation was that the
guard of the possessions of the ‘Roman Republic’ in Italy was
incumbent on the emperor, but that Constantine Copronymus being
an obstinate heretic his rights fell into abeyance. The Pope then
stepped forward as the representative of the ‘Roman Republic’ in
default of a Caesar, and claimed possession of all that the Lombards
had lately usurped. Apparently he considered himself as ‘Patrician’ in
the Exarchate, but as a Patrician owing no duty or obedience to a
heterodox emperor.
King Aistulf died in the next year, killed by a fall from his horse,
and the affairs of Italy troubled Pippin no more, Desiderius, duke of
Istria, the new Lombard king, being occupied with strengthening
himself against an attempt of the ex-king Ratchis to leave his cloister
and resume the crown. The rest of Pippin’s reign was mainly devoted
to the completion of the Frankish dominion in southern Gaul. Soon
after his proclamation as king his officers had recovered for him all
the Saracen towns in Septimania north of Narbonne. In 759 Pippin
marched in person to lay siege to that city, the last bulwark of Islam
Pippin beyond the Pyrenees. The Christian inhabitants of the
takes place rose at his approach, slew the Arab garrison,
Narbonne, and opened their gates to the Frank. No help came
759.
from Spain, where civil war was—as usual—raging,
and the boundaries of the realm of Pippin were advanced to the
Pyrenees.
Of far greater difficulty was the conquest of Aquitaine, the last
achievement of Pippin. The old duke Hunold, the adversary of
Charles Martel, had retired into a cloister, and had been succeeded
by his false and restless son Waifer. On being summoned to give up
some Frankish refugees, and surrender certain church lands, the
new duke took up arms against his suzerain in 760; when Pippin
appeared with all the host of Austrasia and ravaged Berri and
Auvergne, Waifer asked for peace, and did homage. But the moment
that his liege lord had departed home, he flung his fealty to the
winds and began to ravage Burgundy. Next year the king returned in
force and conquered Clermont and the rest of Auvergne, to which in
762 he added Bourges and the land of Berri. Waifer held out with
the greatest obstinacy, and was confirmed in his resistance by
learning of the revolt of Tassilo, duke of Bavaria, who judged the
Conquest time favourable for freeing his duchy from the Franks.
of This gave Aquitaine a certain respite, but by 766
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