Lyrics : Marie-Claire Calvet
Music : Marco Sabiu
It was a short time after matters in Aquitaine had drawn to a close, that brother Carloman without warning went into sudden repose, withdrawing from the anxieties of this world, to make Charlemagne the sole and unchallenged ruler of a united Frankish Empire. The marriage that had been arranged between Charles and the daughter of the King of the Lombards, to seal diplomatic and strategic links with Northern Italy, had within a year been annulled; and King Desiderius, furious at Charlemagne’s dismissal of his daughter, welcomed the widow and infant sons of the deceased Carloman to his court, where he supported the young prince's claim to his rightful share of the Frankish Kingdom.
Rome, meanwhile, was locked in strife, hemmed in by powers that each wanted to assert their primacy over one another. Hadrian, the Bishop of the City of Rome, appealed to King Charlemagne to honour the agreement that had been set in place between his father and the late Pope Stephen II, to maintain a protectorate over papal lands in Italy. No sooner had Charles embarked on the first of many campaigns against Francia's ancient enemy in pagan Saxony, than a new outbreak of hostilities was to call his attention to the thorn in the side that was the Kingdom of the Lombards.