Alcuin then advises his royal friend to make peace if possible with the “unutterable” people (the Saxons), to forbear threats in dealing with them and to intermit, at any rate for a time, the exaction of tithes. Evidently this prudent counsellor felt that the affairs of Italy had now the most pressing claim on his master’s attention, and that it would be wise to concentrate all his forces for the solution of the problem which there awaited him.
It was then to a monarch thus prepossessed in his favor by the representations of one of his nearest friends that Leo III. appealed in the interview at Paderborn. The pope’s accusers sent their representatives to the Saxon towns, repeating the charges of adultery and perjury, and claiming that the pope should be called upon to deny the truth of these charges on oath. Privily they gave him the advice of professed well-wishers that he should give up the contest, lay down his papal dignity and retire in peace to some convent. But the king, while reserving the investigation into these charges for some future assembly to be held in Rome, showed by his conduct that he attached to them but little importance. After several weeks’ sojourn at Paderborn, Leo was dismissed with all honor from the camp and was escorted by royal _missi_ reverently back to Rome, where he received an enthusiastic welcome from his penitent subjects (30th November, 799).
The close of this year was saddened by the tidings of the death of those two brave champions of Frankish civilization, Gerold and Eric. In the spring of 800, Charles set forth on an expedition into Neustria, a part of his dominions which he had apparently not visited for two-and-twenty years. Piratical raids of the Northmen seem to have been the determining cause of this expedition, the object of which was to put the coast of the Channel in a proper state of defence. He also, however, received the submission of some Breton chiefs who had long been in a chronic condition of revolt; he made the round of his villas and country palaces in Neustria; and above all he visited the tomb of St. Martin at Tours, and had a long spell of close and confidential intercourse with his friend Alcuin. Here at Tours his fifth and last wife Liutgard died (4th June, 800), and her illness probably lengthened his stay in that city. At length, after revisiting Rhine-land and holding a _placitum_ [assembly] at Mainz (August, 800) he began his last and most celebrated journey into Italy.