| Notes |
- The Carolingians were ambitious, and Pepin’s ambition included his goal of partnering the Frankish kingdom with the Papacy in Rome for an arrangement of mutual advantage. With this end in mind, he dispatched envoys to Pope Zacharias. The messengers brought a letter to the Pope, which asked whether it was wise for a country to be ruled by powerless kings. Zacharias was able to translate Pepin’s meaning and responded that by his authority, he decreed that Pepin III was to be crowned the King of the Franks. In 750, the Mayor of the Palace, Pepin III the Short—his name refers not to his height but to his birth order, Pepin Le Bref or “Younger,” deposed King Childeric III, ushering in a new dynasty, the Carolingians, as the last Merovingian sought refuge—and no doubt, the hope of a longer life—in a monastery. In 751, Archbishop Boniface anointed Pepin III as king.
Historical opinion often seems to regard him as the lesser son and lesser father of two greater men, though a great man in his own right. He continued to build up the heavy cavalry which his father had begun. He maintained the standing army that his father had found necessary to protect the realm and form the core of its full army in wartime. He not only contained the Iberian Muslims as his father had, but drove them out of what is now France and, as important, he managed to subdue the Aquitanians and the Basques after three generations of on-off clashes, so opening the gate to central and southern Gaul and Muslim Iberia. He continued his father's expansion of the Frankish church (missionary work in Germany and Scandinavia) and the institutional infrastructure (feudalism) that would prove the backbone of medieval Europe. His rule, while not as great as either his father's or son's, was historically important and of great benefit to the Franks as a people.
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Abt 714 - 768 (54 years)
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