The short interval of peace now allowed him, Charlemagne employed in endeavoring to educate and civilize his people. He made a tour through his dominions, spreading local and general improvement, reforming laws, advancing knowledge, and building churches and monasteries, Christianity being one of the chief means to which he trusted for the attainment of his grand objects. In this he was no less successful than he had before been in war. With the exception of the Eastern Empire, France was now the most cultivated nation in Europe, even Rome herself sending thither for skilful workmen, while commerce, roads, and mechanics must have been much advanced, as we may infer from the facility with which marble columns and immense stone crosses were often carried through the whole extent of France upon carriages of native construction. Luxury, too, with its attendant arts, had made considerable strides. Vases of gold and silver richly carved, silver tables brightly wrought, bracelets, rings, and table-cloths of fine linen, might be seen in the houses of the nobles. The people must have been dexterous in working iron, for their superiority in this respect is evinced by the severe laws forbidding the exportation of arms.
The calm, thus wisely employed, did not last long. Charlemagne was soon aroused from his peaceful occupations to put down a revolt of Tassilo, Duke of Bavaria, as well as a meditated attack upon Italy by Adalgisus, the son of the deposed Lombard king, Desiderius, who was assisted underhand by the Greek empress, Irene, and had besides formed a secret alliance with the Duke of Beneventum. Tassilo, being seized, was condemned to death by the great council. He appealed to the clemency of the king, who, ever averse to shed blood, mitigated the sentence into a lifelong seclusion from the world in a cloister. Adalgisus was met by the Duke of Beneventum, not to assist him, as he had expected, but to oppose him, for the duke had in good time discovered that loyalty was more likely to prosper than treason. He therefore joined the army of France under Grimwold, and in the battle which succeeded the Greek forces were entirely routed, and Adalgisus disappears from the busy scene.