Charlemagne Conquers the Lombard Kingdom (774): Siege of Pavia

In 773-774 Charlemagne, king of the Franks, invaded northern Italy, besieged the Lombard capital of Pavia for about nine months and forced King Desiderius to surrender in June 774. He then took the title “King of the Franks and of the Lombards”, ending two centuries of independent Lombard monarchy. The conquest made Charlemagne master of most of Italy and protector of the papacy.

Background

The Lombards had ruled much of Italy since the Lombard invasion of 568. Their expansion towards Rome had already led Charlemagne’s father, Pepin the Short, to invade twice in the 750s and to hand conquered lands to the pope in the Donation of Pepin.

Relations then improved for a time. Around 770 Charlemagne married a daughter of Desiderius, but he repudiated her about a year later. When Charlemagne’s brother Carloman died in December 771, his widow Gerberga and their sons fled to Desiderius. The Lombard king pressed Pope Hadrian I to anoint the boys as Frankish kings and seized several papal towns. Hadrian appealed to Charlemagne for help.

The campaign of 773

After negotiations failed, Charlemagne crossed the Alps in summer 773 in two columns, one led by himself over the Mont Cenis pass and another by his uncle Bernard over the Great St Bernard. Desiderius and his son Adelchis held fortified barriers, known as the clusae, in the Susa valley. A Frankish detachment outflanked them through the mountains, and the Lombard army broke up and retreated.

Desiderius shut himself inside Pavia, while Adelchis went to Verona with Gerberga and Carloman’s sons. Charlemagne laid siege to Pavia from about September 773 and sent a force against Verona, which surrendered; Gerberga and her sons were handed over and disappear from the record. Adelchis fled and eventually reached Constantinople, where he lived as a Byzantine court official.

Easter in Rome

With the siege in progress, Charlemagne travelled to Rome and arrived on Holy Saturday, 2 April 774. Pope Hadrian I received him with great ceremony. According to the papal biography of Hadrian, Charlemagne renewed his father’s promise to the papacy, and a copy of the confirmation was laid in St Peter’s. Historians debate how much territory this document really promised, since the Franks never handed over the wide lands it seems to describe.

The fall of Pavia

Pavia surrendered in early June 774, weakened by hunger and disease. Desiderius, his wife Ansa and their daughter were taken to Francia, where the former king ended his life in a monastery, traditionally named as Corbie. Charlemagne seized the royal treasure and began to call himself “rex Francorum et Langobardorum”, King of the Franks and of the Lombards, alongside his title of patrician of the Romans.

He kept Lombard laws and much of the existing administration. A revolt led by Duke Hrodgaud of Friuli in 776 was quickly crushed, after which more Frankish counts were appointed. In 781 Pope Hadrian anointed Charlemagne’s young son Pepin as king of Italy, a sub-kingdom within the Frankish realm.

Key people

• Charlemagne (c. 747-814): king of the Franks from 768, who led the invasion in person and took the Lombard crown.
• Desiderius (king 757-774): the last Lombard king, a former duke in Tuscany who had come to the throne with papal support after the death of Aistulf.
• Adelchis: son of Desiderius and co-king from 759; after 774 he lived in exile in Constantinople and in 788 took part in a failed Byzantine attempt to regain a foothold in southern Italy.
• Pope Hadrian I (pope 772-795): a Roman aristocrat who called in the Franks and became one of Charlemagne’s closest allies.

The conquest also brought Lombard talent north. The scholar Paul the Deacon, whose brother had joined the revolt of 776, came to Charlemagne’s court in the early 780s and later wrote his History of the Lombards, still the main source for the people whose kingdom had fallen.

Consequences

The conquest gave the Carolingians control of the old Lombard kingdom and closer ties with Rome, steps on the road to Charlemagne’s imperial coronation in 800. Italy north of Rome would remain linked to the Frankish and later German emperors for centuries. In the south, however, the Lombard duchy of Benevento survived as an independent principality.

Timeline

• c. 770: Charlemagne marries a daughter of Desiderius.
• 771, December: Carloman dies; his family flees to the Lombard court.
• 773, summer: Charlemagne crosses the Alps and outflanks the Lombard defences in the Susa valley.
• 773, about September: The siege of Pavia begins.
• 774, 2 April: Charlemagne arrives in Rome for Easter and meets Pope Hadrian I.
• 774, early June: Pavia surrenders; Desiderius is deposed and exiled.
• 776: Revolt of Hrodgaud of Friuli is suppressed.
• 781: Pepin, son of Charlemagne, is anointed king of Italy in Rome.

Why it matters

The fall of Pavia ended the last independent Germanic kingdom in Italy and greatly enlarged Charlemagne’s realm. It bound Italy and the papacy to the Frankish world and prepared the ground for the revival of a western empire.