The Byzantine Government naturally did not approve of this result of Frankish intervention. It had hoped to regain possession of the districts that had been wrested from it by the Lombards. But Pepin took up arms, not for the Byzantine emperor, but for the sake of the pope. Kings at that time founded monasteries and endowed them with landed properties, so that prayers might be offered for them there; Pepin wished to provide the pope with temporal territories, so he might be certain of the prayers of the pope. Therefore, when the Byzantine ambassadors came to him before the second expedition of 756 and asked him to return to the emperor the cities taken from the Lombards, he said that to Rome alone would he restore the cities. Thus did Pepin found the States of the Church.