Pepin (also spelled Pippin, April 777 – 8 July 810), born Carloman, was the son of Charlemagne and King of Italy (781–810) under the authority of his father. Pepin was the second son of Charlemagne by his then-wife Hildegard. He was born Carloman, but was rechristened with the royal name Pepin (also the name of his older half-brother Pepin the Hunchback, and his grandfather King Pepin the Younger) when he was a young child. 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. Pepin 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 spoils were sent to Charlemagne in Aachen and redistributed to all his followers and even to foreign rulers, including King Offa of Mercia. A celebratory poem, De Pippini regis Victoria Avarica, was composed after Pepin forced the Avar khagan to submit in 796. This poem was composed at Verona, Pepin's capital after 799 and the centre of Carolingian Renaissance literature in Italy. The Versus de Verona (c. 800), an urban encomium of the city, likewise praises king Pepin. The Historia Langobardorum codicis Gothani hails Pepin's campaign against Benevento and his liberation of Corsica "from the oppression of the Moors." 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, on 8 July 810. Family The issue of Pepin's relationships is not entirely clear. A litany of Liber confrater augiensis attributes to him as his wife a certain Chrotais (or Ruadheid), married shortly before 796,. However, the Vita Hludowici written by Thegan of Trier around 840 says that King Bernard of Italy was born of a concubine (ex concubina natus), an affirmation reinforced by a litany of St. Gallen placing Bernard in a list of Carolingians of illegitimate birth. We do not know