Some years apparently before the death of Pippin the alliance between the two great Austrasian chiefs had been cemented by a marriage between Adelgisel, son of St. Arnulf, and a daughter of Pippin, who was probably named Becga. From this marriage sprang the second Pippin, the great-grandfather of Charlemagne.
Adelgisel himself was mayor of the palace for a few years before the return of his father-in-law, but he seems to have been a somewhat insignificant person, and is overshadowed in history by the sanctity of his father and the success of his son.
A much more important figure is his brother-in-law, Grimwald, son of Pippin of Landen, who three years after his father’s death succeeded by a deed of blood perpetrated by one of his adherents, in obtaining the coveted mayoralty. For thirteen years, or thereabouts, he acted as _major domus_ to the weak but devout Sigibert III., the first of the absolutely _fainéant_ kings. Then, in 656, on the death of Sigibert, Grimwald deemed that the time had come for ending the farce of Merovingian royalty, shaved off the long locks of Dagobert, his dead master’s son, sent him, under the escort of the Bishop of Poitiers, to a monastery in Ireland, and proclaimed his own son, to whom he had given the Merovingian name of Childebert, King of the Eastern Franks. He was, however, a century too soon. The glamour which hung round the descendants of the great Clovis had as yet not utterly vanished, neither had the Pippins and the Arnulfs yet done such great deeds as to give them any title to claim the Frankish throne. “The Franks,” says the chronicler, “being very indignant hereat, prepared snares for Grimwald, and, taking him prisoner, carried him for condemnation to Clovis II., King of the Franks. In the city of Paris he was confined in a dungeon and bound with torturing chains; and at length, as he was worthy of death for what he had done to his lord, death finished him with mighty torments.”
This premature clutch at royalty seems to have damaged for a long time the fortunes of the Austrasian house. In fact, we hear no more of the descendants of Pippin in the male line; it is through the Arnulfings, the posterity of Grimwald’s sister, that the fortunes of the family will one day revive.