Pepin the Short

Pepin the Short ended nearly three centuries of Merovingian kingship in 751, when he set aside the last powerless king of the Franks and took the crown for himself. As the first Carolingian king he forged the alliance between the Frankish monarchy and the papacy, created the territorial basis of the Papal States and pushed Frankish rule to the Mediterranean, laying the ground on which his son Charlemagne would build an empire.

Pepin was born around 714, a son of Charles Martel, the dominant figure in the Frankish kingdom, and was educated by the monks of Saint-Denis near Paris. When his father died in 741, the realm was split between Pepin, who became mayor of the palace in Neustria, and his elder brother Carloman, who took Austrasia. The two brothers besieged their half-brother Grifo at Laon and shut him in a monastery, then spent their early years putting down risings among the Bavarians, Saxons, Alemanni and Aquitanians. In 743 they placed Childeric III on the vacant throne as a figurehead. They also backed the missionary Boniface in reforming the Frankish church.

In 747 Carloman withdrew into religious life, leaving Pepin sole ruler. Grifo escaped and revolted again with Bavarian help, but Pepin crushed him and restored the kingdom's frontiers. Holding real power while Childeric held only the title, Pepin asked Pope Zachary whether it was right that kings without power should keep the royal name. The pope, under pressure from the Lombards and in need of a protector, answered that the one who held power should be king. In 751 Childeric was deposed and sent to a monastery, and an assembly of Frankish nobles elected Pepin king; he was anointed at Soissons.

In 754 Pope Stephen II crossed the Alps and anointed Pepin again at Saint-Denis, together with his young sons Charles and Carloman, naming him Patrician of the Romans and forbidding the Franks ever to choose a king from another family. In return Pepin marched against the Lombard king Aistulf, who had pressed into the lands around Rome, and forced him to give up what he had seized. Pepin handed Ravenna and the Pentapolis to the pope. This grant, known as the Donation of Pepin, became the legal foundation of the Papal States.

From around 752 Pepin campaigned in Septimania, the Mediterranean coastland of southern Gaul that had been under Muslim rule. Eastern towns such as Nîmes and Béziers submitted, and Narbonne fell in 759 after a long siege. He then turned on Waiofar, Duke of Aquitaine, in a war that lasted most of the 760s. Pepin's forces burned estates, destroyed vineyards and deported captured garrisons, and by 767 they had taken Toulouse and Bordeaux. Waiofar was killed by his own followers in 768. Repeated Saxon and Bavarian revolts, by contrast, were never fully settled in his lifetime.

Pepin died on campaign on 24 September 768, aged about 54, and was buried at Saint-Denis. Following Frankish custom, the kingdom was divided between his sons Charlemagne and Carloman. Pepin's own reputation has long stood in the shadow of his son's, but the royal dynasty, the papal alliance and the southern conquests that Charlemagne inherited were his work.

Our 700 map shows the Frankish kingdom before Pepin seized the throne, and our 800 map shows the Carolingian Empire that grew from it, including Septimania and Aquitaine.