Charles builds a new camp at the…

Leo IV had in 768 married an Athenian-born sixteen-year-old named Irene, who two years later had presented him with a son.

At the request of the army and with the support of the Senate and the citizens, Leo now crowns him coemperor as Constantine VI, passing over the caesar Nicephorus, a stepbrother of Leo.

The resulting conspiracy in favor of Nicephorus is suppressed, and the conspirators exiled.

Charles spends Easter in Treviso after putting down a revolt by Friuli and Spoleto, removing Hrodgaud, the Duke of Friuli, from power, and signing a treaty with Hildeprand, the Duke of Spoleto.

Co-conspirators in the revolt are Arechis Adelchis.

Arechis is not defeated in this action by Charles, and Adalghis never leaves Constantinople to provide any support to the revolt.

The fierce and successful Saxon resistance obliges Charles to change tactics.

He begins gradually annexing slices of Saxon territory, establishing forts, and dispatching missionaries, with the objective of subjugation and forcible conversion to Christianity.

The stubborn Saxons, led by Widukind and supported by Danes and Slavs continually harass Charles’ forces, who annually attack one or another region of Saxon territory.

Charles dispenses generous rewards to those Saxons who submit.

The lot of those who resist is deportation in some instances and mass executions in others.

When a rebellion in 776 destroys the fortress at Eresburg, Charles, warring in Italy, returns very rapidly for the third time to Saxony (making it to Lippe before the Saxons knew he left Italy).

The Saxons are once again brought to heel; Widukind escapes to the Danes.

The outcome of the Battle of Otford, fought in 776 between Mercia, led by King Offa, and the Jutes of Kent at Otford (in what is today in the English county of Kent), is not recorded, but the reestablishment of Kent as an independent kingdom implies that the battle was won by Kent.

Leo profits from discord among the Bulgarians by granting the Bulgarian khan Telerig asylum in Constantinople from 776 to 777 and marrying him to a cousin of his wife Irene.

He also conducts three campaigns against the Arabs in Anatolia and Syria from 777.

Telerig, despite his apparent success, finds it necessary to flee Bulgaria to Leo IV the Khazar in 777.

The imperial government grants Telerig asylum and the title of patrikios.

Telerig converts to Christianity under the name of Theophylaktos and marries a cousin of the Empress Irene.

Al-Mahdi actively persecutes the Manichaeans, whom he defines as heretics to deny them status as a protected community.

He also tries to identify Manichaeans who have joined the Muslim community without abandoning their previous ideas and practices.

Charles begins to eye expansion opportunities in the European southwest for his brand of Christian civilization.

He takes time out from his annual ravaging of the “heathen Saxons” to lead a large Frankish army southward across the Pyrenees toward Zaragoza in strife-torn Muslim Spain, where the Umayyads are resisting a takeover by the usurping Abbasids.

Barred from admission to Zaragoza, the Frankish army ravages several small towns.

Charles, called home from his invasion of northern Spain to deal with problems in Saxony, passes through Pamplona and, evidently mistaking the ancient Christian Basque city for a Moorish town, razes it.

The Tripolitanian Ibadiyya had, on the death of al-Rustam, elected as Imam Abu l-Hatim al-Malzuzi, who, having launched a second unsuccessful revolt in 768, is killed in 772.