ABSTRACT
Like Pippin, Charlemagne's relations with the church were interwoven with his political activities and ways of conquest, but there were significant discontinuities as well as continuities between the policies of the father and son. Charlemagne in some respects seems to have missed the point of the careful 'balance of power' that Pippin had tried to create between kings, bishops, abbots and lay magnates. During the long and bloody war against the Saxons, conquest and the spread of the Christian faith became the principal objectives. The Frankish army became the most efficient military machine in Europe. The military progress of the Saxon campaigns has also a number of parallels with Pippin's conquest of Aquitaine. The conquest of Saxony by 797 and the annexation of Bavaria in 788 made it possible for the Franks to extend their political conquest as well as their missionary activities into Carinthia and further east and north into Avar and Slav territory.
