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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepin_of_ItalyKing of Italy
Pepin was the son of
Charlemagne and
king of Italy 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 brother
Pepin the Hunchback betrayed their father, the royal name Pepin passed to him. He was made king of Italy after his father's conquest of the
Lombards, in 781, and crowned by
Pope Hadrian I with the
Iron 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 ravaged
Pannonia, while his father marched along the
Danube into
Avar territory. Charlemagne left the campaigning to deal with a
Saxon revolt in 792. Pepin and Duke
Eric 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 in
Aachen and redistributed to all his followers and even to foreign rulers, including King
Offa of Mercia. A celebratory poem,
De Pippine regis Victoria Avarica, was composed after Pepin forced the Avar khagan to submit in 796.
[1] This poem was composed at
Verona, Pepin's capital after 799 and the centre of
Carolingian Renaissance literature in Italy. The
Versus de Verona , an urban encomium of the city, likewise praises king Pepin.
[2]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 , 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 brother
Louis the Pious.