7 Charlemagne 7The Frisians—Saxon allies living along the North Sea east
of the Rhine—were also forced to surrender.
While the conquest of Saxony was in progress,
Charlemagne undertook other campaigns. He invaded
the Lombard kingdom in 774, which ended with his
assumption of the Lombard crown and the annexation of
the kingdom’s territory in northern Italy. Concerned
with defending southern Gaul from Muslim attacks,
Charlemagne invaded Spain in 778, which ended in the
disastrous defeat of the Frankish army, immortalized three
centuries later in the epic poem The Song of Roland. Despite
this setback, Charlemagne persisted in his effort to make
the frontier in Spain more secure. In 781 he created a sub-
kingdom of Aquitaine with his son, Pippin, as king. From
that base Frankish forces mounted a series of campaigns
that eventually established Frankish control over the
Spanish March, the territory lying between the Pyrenees
and the Ebro River.
In 787 and 788, Charlemagne forcibly annexed Bavaria,
whose leaders had long resisted Frankish domination. That
victory was followed by successful Frankish campaigns in
791, 795, and 796 that hastened the disintegration of the
Avar empire. Charlemagne captured a huge store of trea-
sure, claimed a block of territory south of the Danube,
and opened a missionary field that led to the conversion of
the Avars and their former Slavic subjects to Christianity.
Charlemagne’s military successes resulted in an ever-
lengthening frontier, which needed to be defended. His
vast holdings covered all of the present-day countries of
France, Switzerland, Belgium, and The Netherlands; half
of Italy and Germany; and parts of Austria and Spain.
Through a combination of military force and diplomacy,
he established relatively stable relations with a variety of
potentially dangerous enemies.