- Pepin of Italy
Pepin (April 773 –
8 July 810 ) was the son ofCharlemagne andking of Italy (781-810) under the authority of his father.Pepin was the third son of
Charlemagne , and the second with his wife Hildegard. He was born Carloman, but when his brotherPepin the Hunchback betrayed their father, the royal name Pepin passed to him. He was made king of Italy after his father's conquest of theLombards , in 781, and crowned byPope Hadrian I with theIron Crown of Lombardy .He was active as ruler of Italy and worked to expand the Frankish empire. In 791, he marched a Lombard army into the
Drava valley and ravagedPannonia , while his father marched along theDanube into Avar territory. Charlemagne left the campaigning to deal with a Saxon revolt in 792. Pepin and DukeEric of Friuli continued, however, to assault the Avars' ring-shaped strongholds. The great Ring of the Avars, their capital fortress, was taken twice. The booty was sent to Charlemagne inAachen and redistributed to all his followers and even to foreign rulers, including KingOffa of Mercia .His activities included a long, but unsuccessful siege of
Venice in 810. The siege lasted six months and Pepin's army was ravaged by the diseases of the local swamps and was forced to withdraw. A few months later Pepin died.He married Bertha, daughter of
William of Gellone ,count of Toulouse , and had five daughters with her (Adelaide, marriedLambert I of Nantes ; Atala; Gundrada; Bertha; and Tetrada), all of whom but the eldest were born between 800 and Pepin's death and died before their grandfather's death in 814. Pepin also had an illegitimate son Bernard. Pepin was expected to inherit a third of his father's empire, but he predeceased him. The Italian crown passed on to his son Bernard, but the empire went to Pepin's younger brotherLouis the Pious .
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