Subscribe now for full access and no adverts
The Battle (or Siege) of Pavia, which took place between September 773 and June 774, was a nine-month saga that ended with the northern Italian city, 35km (22 miles) south of Milan, being taken by the Frankish army of Charlemagne. Fought near the ancient city of Ticinum (modern Pavia), it saw the defeat of Desiderius, the Lombard king whose people were the dominant force in that part of the peninsula. The Franks, though, had held the title patricius Romanus (‘Patrician of the Romans’) since 754 and the time of Charlemagne’s father Pepin. This meant they would protect the Catholic Church from spiritual and temporal threats – and therein lay the genesis of conflict.
Having succeeded to the Frankish throne in 768, albeit jointly with his sibling Carloman (see the preceding article), Charlemagne was soon plotting how to bring the Lombards to heel. There was friction between the two ruling brothers – but also with Desiderius. The Lombard king was at odds with the papacy, which had helped him ascend the throne, but only in return for false promises – a combination of force and fraud then kept him in power for 18 years (756-774). The day of reckoning was coming, though. In 772, the Pope, Adrian I, expelled Lombard officials from the Roman Curia, the central administrative offices of the Catholic church. This elicited a furious response from Desiderius, who invaded papal lands, capturing the ancient town of Otriculum (today’s Otricoli), just 70km (40 miles) north of Rome itself. Adrian appealed for help to Charlemagne, who quite frankly (excuse the pun) must have been rubbing his Frankish hands with glee.
Earlier, Charlemagne had actually contrived an alliance with the Lombards by marrying (in c.770) a daughter of Desiderius, named Desiderata. Their union saw Desiderius retain control of the southern duchies; within 12 months, however, Charlemagne had thought better about both the marriage and the alliance, divorcing the lady and sending her packing back to her father. Needless to say, this was regarded as something of a diplomatic incident by the Lombards, and Desiderius was intent on revenge for the personal slight. The situation became murkier still when Charlemagne’s brother Carloman died in 771, and his widow Gerberge upped sticks with her kids and sought refuge with Desiderius in Pavia. Why she did this we do not know – but the logical conclusion has to be that she did not feel safe under Charles’s protection.
Desiderius – who has been described as ‘shifty and perfidious’ – must have thought that all his Christmases had come at once. He gladly offered Gerberge asylum, and also made noises to the effect that her children should get their rightful share of the Frankish kingdom. With Frankish-Lombard relations having degenerated, the Pope now saw an opportunity to free himself of Lombard overlordship, appealing to Charles to come to his aid, because ‘they would attack us by land and water, conquer the city of Rome and lead ourselves into captivity… therefore we implore you by the living God and the Prince of the Apostles to hasten to our aid immediately, lest we be destroyed’. The Pope was perhaps being opportunistic and stoking the fires of Lombard-Frankish enmity to his advantage – but it was against this background that Rome was then threatened by Desiderius in 772-773.
With the full extent of Desiderius’s aggressions now established, Charlemagne’s revenge mission took on the aura of a religious crusade, as he set about sorting things out. Having met his Franks, most likely at the traditional assembly known as the Field of May, he determined to follow his late father’s lead by invading Italy, and in the service of St Peter too. A levy of the nation in arms was ordered – but while this was under way, Charles also made diplomatic overtures to try to render the campaign redundant. He reputedly offered Desiderius 14,000 gold solidi, among other loot, in return for agreeing to Adrian’s demands. If the offer was ever made, it proved fruitless. ‘Neither by prayers nor by gifts did Charles avail to bend the most ferocious heart’ of the Lombard king. The Frankish host mustered at Geneva, and then Charlemagne marched into Italy in the early summer of 773.
A brief campaign
Charlemagne’s army may have numbered as many as 40,000 men, or possibly as few as 10,000. We just do not know – although some sources claiming 100,000 cavalry and infantry must be exaggerated. Whatever the precise figure, he must have had a large enough army to surround a city for nine months – and, deploying a favourite tactic, he split this force in half, with one wing commanded by his uncle Bernard (or Bernhard) de St Quentin (c.720-787). The army marched through the Alpine passes, with the force of Bernard aptly making its way through the Great St Bernard Pass (known at the time as the Mountain of Jupiter), while Charlemagne navigated the Dora Susa Pass, near to Mount Cenis, further to the west. What occurred after this is part-conjecture, as we only have confused and anything-but-comprehensive accounts from the annals and from the work of a papal biographer. There was no fighting on the summits of the passes, Desiderius having decided to confront the Franks first in the narrow gorges on the Italian side, before they had been able completely to clear the mountains. He marched from Susa to meet Charles, while his son Adelchis, advancing from the town of Ivrea, looked to ensnare Bernard.
He was soon plotting how to bring the Lombards to heel.
The Franks first encountered Lombard defences at the foot of the mountains, descending towards the valley of the Dora to find their way barred not only by enemy soldiers, but also by hastily constructed walls and ‘war-like engines’ that commanded the pass. Forcing the position seemed tough, with an initial assault failing, so Charlemagne again tried diplomacy, offering the loot once more in return for Desiderius restoring conquered cities. Rebuffed again by Desiderius, the Frankish king changed tack, demanding instead that three hostages, sons of Lombard nobles, should act as a guarantor that restitution of those cities would follow. Still Desiderius refused to cooperate, and Charlemagne apparently seriously considered abandoning his invasion and retiring back through the mountains. In this moment of crisis, however, panic was somehow to overwhelm the Lombard force, resulting in it fleeing with its stores but minus tents in a pell-mell dash down the valley with Franks champing at its rear and slaying any they caught up with. What had happened?
One likely explanation is that scouts had found a way around, courtesy of a Lombard traitor – a situation that reminds one of the decisive moment at the famous battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. It seems equally likely, however, that Bernard may have arrived on the scene, having eluded (or defeated) Adelchis, and was now advancing on Desiderius’s flank, threatening to cut him off from Pavia. The strategy of dividing one’s force in enemy land is known to be risky, but Charlemagne’s notion that he could have two hosts converge on an enemy ‘in the centre of the circle’ was seemingly to prove decisive. Waking up to the realisation that they had been outmanoeuvred drove Desiderius’s men away from their strong position. With those defenders now facing the prospect of a flank attack, or even a hit in the rear, they withdrew prudently but panic-stricken to the fortified city of Pavia, the Lombard capital. This is where the siege would play out – beginning in September 773 with anything between 2,500 and 10,000 Lombards holed up there. Apparently resigned to a lengthy siege, Charles actually nipped home briefly, in order to bring his family to his camp.
The Franks had sufficient troops to surround Pavia – but Charlemagne had not brought any siege machinery, perhaps because of the difficulty of marching it through the Alps (unlike Hannibal, he did not bring elephants). His tactic would simply be to starve the Lombards into submission, his enemy having doubly slipped up: they had failed to get in the provisions they would need to withstand a lengthy siege, while also negligently allowing the Franks to occupy the surrounding country, which gave them much-needed resources at harvest time.
Desiderius himself was ensconced in Pavia, awaiting the assault, but his son Adelchis had departed for Verona to protect the family of the late Carloman. Charles responded by leading a small, carefully chosen force to besiege Verona. Adelchis showed his lack of mettle by abandoning his Frankish charges and fleeing for Constantinople; Verona fell and Carloman’s clan was captured. Charles returned to the Po’s upper valley and took many Lombard cities, while still maintaining his grip on Pavia. The central Italian Lombards of Spoleto, who had anyway never really fancied Desiderius, a ‘Tuscan upstart’, defected to the papacy as they could see the way the wind was blowing. The citizens of Fermo, Osimo, Ancona, and Castellum Felicitatis followed suit.
A lengthy siege
Historical facts concerning the siege are few, but we know that Charles now subdued the whole region surrounding Pavia from the early months of 774. Notker the Stammerer (c.840-912), in his book on Charles’s deeds, recounted that Desiderius had with him a former chief minister of Charles, Otker, who had defected. They watched the approach of the Franks from a tower, the arrival of baggage wagons, ‘the rank and file of soldiers from so many lands’, followed by the corps of guards, and the religious bods who seemed to unnerve Desiderius more than the troops. Then appeared the ‘man of iron’, Charles himself, with ‘iron helmet, gauntlet, and breastplate, with an iron spear held erect by his left hand, for his right was ever stretched forth to his unconquered sword’.
Charlemagne led a considerable host, for ‘the iron river filled all the plain… and struck terror into the pale watchers on the walls’; Desiderius is said to have fainted. Otker had sided with the Lombards, but he was the exception; Desiderius was hampered by the wider problem of governing a kingdom where ‘centrifugal force’ (moving away from the centre) was manifest. There was plenty of treachery and disunion, with Desiderius failing to command the loyalty of his folk. The defection of cities such as Spoleto was really no surprise. There was also the visceral antipathy of the papacy, which regarded the Lombards as a ‘most unspeakable, most foul and stinking’ race. Yes, it was racial hatred.
Charles even found time to visit the Pope, in Rome at Easter 774, leaving the working part of his army encamped around Pavia. Meanwhile, Desiderius contemplated his fate, hoping for a relief column – yet no relief headed his way. Lombard dukes were either unwilling or unable to assist, and Desiderius proved similarly unwilling or unable to mount any form of counter-attack himself. His unpopularity as a ruler and the prevalence of treason within his kingdom may help explain his abandonment. For his part, Charles – ‘the Iron Man’ – was eyeing up the prize, and would soon be back at Pavia, where the siege was drawing to a close, riding round its environs and establishing his authority. By now, disease was rife within the city, as was famine, and more people were dying from these causes than from the blows of enemy swords.
There is a legend, passed down from Notker (who was not a contemporary), that Charlemagne built himself a small church, the Church of Santa Sofia, during the siege, and accomplished this feat in a single day, in order that he could better attend to his religious ministrations. This may be just imaginative licence on the part of the chronicler. The Monk of St Gall continues, though, by describing how some citizens of Pavia still refused to surrender, prompting Charles to build his church so ‘they might render service to Almighty God outside the walls, if they could not do so within them’. It only took eight hours according to the monk, so must have been pretty basic.
By the final month of the siege, in June 774, famine was hitting Pavia hard. There had been no significant attempt to relieve the city, and the Lombard king, realising the game was up, decided to open the gates to Charlemagne – with the Lombards duly surrendering peaceably on 5 June 774. Charlemagne’s army had spilled not a drop of its own blood, and the long siege ended with sudden capture. Desiderius and his family were carted off to northern France and a life of monasticism.
Legacy
Having claimed his prize by conquering the Lombard kingdom outright, with Italian lands right down to the border of the southern province of Benevento being absorbed into the Carolingian hegemony, Charlemagne declared himself rex Langobardorum (‘King of Italy’) and was acknowledged thereafter as King of the Franks and Lombards. This was unique for the time: a ruler adopting the title of the conquered as his own; he was empire-building. In addition, he was allying himself further with the Church, which had sought him out as its protector. By recognising its temporal authority in central Italy, he had put the building blocks in place for medieval papal power. The papacy had certainly benefited from the nullifying of the Lombard menace, which had been the most persevering threat to its ambitions, and now had the dominions that would take it into modern times.
The Lombards had been vanquished, their power shattered, and it was now the Franks who were top dogs in Italy, and who would implement significant changes there. While many of Charlemagne’s men were parachuted into positions of authority and power in Italy, there was still room for Lombards too, provided they were prepared to make peace with the new ruler. The defeat and then destruction of the Lombard monarchy removed the most potent and persistent threat to papal security and established the foundations for the Holy Roman Empire. Charlemagne’s subsequent crowning by a pope also advanced the theory and cause of the divine right of kings, which would become a cause célèbre in 17th-century England. Victory at Pavia had enabled Charles to become Italy’s major military power, placing him in a partnership with the Pope, and establishing his dynasty’s role as ‘defender of the faith’.
An interesting footnote to the story is that the Church of San Teodoro in Pavia contains frescoes of a cycle of paintings (completed by an unknown Lombard artist) that were commissioned in 1514, 740 years after Charlemagne’s great victory. The artwork depicts scenes from the life of St Theodore of Pavia (d. c.778), who was bishop of the city at the time of the siege. In this pictorial cycle, however, the siege actually fails, as the saint-bishop manages to cause the waters of the Ticino to flood, swamping the Frankish camp and forcing Charlemagne to call off his assault. It was a wonderful rewriting of history, of course – but it showed that, all those centuries later, there was still a need to big up the Lombards by presenting them as victors of the siege. As it is, the cycle speaks volumes about local identity and autonomy and a strong desire to conjure glorious victories out of past defeats.
One final thing to note is that a later Battle of Pavia occurred on 24 February 1525. It was the decisive set-to in the Italian War (1521-1526), fought between the Kingdom of France and Charles V’s Habsburg Empire – but that, as they say, is a story for another day.
Stephen Roberts is a historian who has written several times for MHM, including cover stories on the Spitfire, the Siege of Leningrad, and the Battle of Aboukir Bay.
