Pepin of Italy

Pepin (April 773 – 8 July 810) was the son of Charlemagne and king of Italy (781-810) 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.

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 (Adelaide, married Lambert I of Nantes; Atala; Gundrada; Bertha; and Tetrada), 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.