But it would be a mistake to see in the wars which
followed
the death
of Louis the Pious a struggle between races.
of Louis the Pious a struggle between races.
Cambridge Medieval History - v3 - Germany and the Western Empire
Pepin, after
having occupied Orleans, had joined them at Verberie, N. E. of Senlis.
Louis the German had done likewise. As to Lothar, he was lingering
in Italy, perhaps to watch what turn events would take. But any
resistance was impossible for Louis, because the whole weight of military
force veas on the side of the conspirators. The latter declared that they
had no quarrel with the Emperor, but only with his wife, whom they
accused of a guilty connexion with Bernard. They demanded therefore
that Judith should be exiled and her accomplices punished. Louis,
sending Bernard for refuge to his city of Barcelona, and leaving the
Empress at Aix, went to meet the rebels, who were then at Compiègne
and surrendered himself into their hands. Judith, who had set out to
join him, fearing violence took shelter in the church of Notre-Dame at
Laon. Two of the counts who had espoused Pepin's cause, Warin of
## p. 15 (#61) ##############################################
Disloyalty of Lothar
15
Mâcon and Lambert of Nantes, came up and forcibly removed her.
After having detained her a prisoner for some time with her husband,
they finally shut her up in a convent at Poitiers. Her two brothers,
Conrad and Rudolf, were tonsured and relegated to Aquitanian monas-
teries.
In these circumstances, Lothar, dreading no doubt that he might
be ignored if a division should take place without him, arrived at
Compiègne and at once put himself at the head of the movement, his
first step being to resume his title of joint-Emperor. Louis the Pious
seemed inclined to dismiss Bernard and restore the former government.
Lothar's desires went beyond this, and he surrounded his father with
monks instructed to persuade him to embrace the religious life, for which
he had formerly shewn some inclination. But Louis did not fall in with
this project. He was secretly negotiating with Louis the German and
Pepin, promising them an increase of territory if they would abandon
the cause of Lothar. On their side, the two princes were no more
inclined to be Lothar's subjects than their father's. The Emperor and
his supporters succeeded in gathering a new assembly at Nimeguen in
the autumn, at which were present many of the Saxon and German
lords who were always loyal to Louis. The reaction beginning in favour
of the Emperor now shewed itself plainly. Louis was declared to be
re-established in his former authority. It was also decided to recall
Judith. On the other hand, several of the abettors of the revolt were
arrested. Wala was obliged to surrender the abbey of Corbie. The
Arch-Chaplain Hilduin, Abbot of St Denis, was banished to Paderborn.
Lothar, in alarm, accepted the pardon offered him by his father and
shewed himself at the assembly beside the Emperor in the character of
a dutiful son.
The assembly convoked at Aix-la-Chapelle (February 831) to pass
definitive sentence on the rebels, adjudged them the penalty of death,
which Louis the Pious commuted to imprisonment and exile, together
with confiscation of goods. Lothar himself was obliged to subscribe to
the condemnation of his former partisans. Thus Hilduin lost the
abbeys he had possessed and was banished to Corvey, Wala was impris-
oned in the neighbourhood of the Lake of Geneva, Matfrid and Elisachar
exiled. At the same time the Empress, after solemnly clearing herself
by oath from the accusations levelled against her, was declared restored
to her former position. Her brothers, Conrad and Rudolf, quitted the
monasteries in which they had been temporarily confined, and recovered
their dignities. Contrariwise the name of Lothar again disappears from
the parchments containing the imperial diplomas, the eldest son losing
his privileged position as joint-Emperor, and being reduced to that
of king of Italy, while in accordance with the promise he had made
them Louis the Pious increased the shares of his younger sons in the
inheritance. To Pepin's Aquitanian kingdom were annexed the districts
CH. 1.
## p. 16 (#62) ##############################################
16
Revolt of Louis the German
between the Loire and the Seine, and, to the north of the latter river,
the Meaux country, with the Amiénois and Ponthieu as far as the sea.
Louis of Bavaria saw his portion enlarged by the addition of Saxony
and Thuringia and the greater part of the pagi which make up modern
Belgium and the Netherlands. Charles, besides Alemannia, received Bur-
gundy, Provence and Gothia with a slice of Francia, and in particular,
the important province of Rheims. Nevertheless, as these arrangements
had no validity until Louis the Pious should have disappeared from the
scene, they made little or no change in the actual position of the three
princes, especially as the Emperor expressly reserved to himself the
power to give additional advantage to “any one of our three above-
mentioned sons, who, desirous of pleasing in the first place God, and
secondly ourselves, should distinguish himself by his obedience and
zeal” by withdrawing somewhat “from the portion of that one of his
brothers who shall have neglected to please us. " Yet the sentences
pronounced at Aix-la-Chapelle were to be of no lasting effect. At
Ingelheim, in the beginning of May, several of the former partisans of
Lothar were pardoned. Hilduin, in particular, regained his abbey
of St Denis. On the other hand, Bernard, though like Judith he had
purged himself by oath before the assembly at Thionville from the
accusations made against him, had not been reinstated in his office at
court. On the contrary, it would seem that Louis the Pious made
endeavours to reconcile himself with Lothar, perhaps under the influence
of Judith, who was ever ready to cherish the idea that her young son
might find a protector in his eldest brother. The Emperor was, besides,
in a fair way towards a breach with Pepin. The latter being summoned
to the assembly at Thionville (autumn 831) had delayed under various
pretexts to present himself, and when he did resolve to appear before
the Emperor at Aix (end of 831) his father received him with so small
a show of favour that Pepin either feared or pretended to fear for his
safety, and at the end of December secretly betook himself again to
Aquitaine, disregarding the prohibition, which had been laid
upon
him. Louis decided to take strong measures against him and called an
assembly to meet at Orleans in 832, to which Lothar and Louis the
German were both summoned. From Orleans an expedition was to be
sent south of the Loire.
But at the beginning of 832, the Emperor learned that Louis the
German, perhaps fearing to share the fate of Pepin, or instigated by
some of the leaders of the revolt of 830, was in a state of rebellion,
and at the head of his Bavarians, reinforced by a contingent of Slavs,
had invaded Alemannia (the apanage of Charles) where many of the
nobles had ranged themselves on his side. Relinquishing for the moment
his Aquitanian project, Louis summoned the host of the Franks and
Saxons to muster at Mayence. The leudes eagerly responded to his
appeal, and Louis the German, who was encamped at Lorsch, was
## p. 17 (#63) ##############################################
Provisions for Charles the Bald
17
obliged to recognise that he had no means of resisting the superior
forces at his father's disposal. He therefore retreated. The imperial
army slowly followed his line of march, and by the month of May had
reached Augsburg. Here it was that Louis the German came to seek
his father and make his submission to him, swearing never in future to
renew his attempts at revolt.
Louis then turned towards Aquitaine. From Frankfort, where he
was joined by Lothar, he convoked a new host to meet at Orleans on
1 September. Thence he crossed the Loire, and ravaging the country
as he went, reached Limoges. He halted for some time to the north of
this town, at the royal residence of Jonac in La Marche, where Pepin
came to him and in his turn submitted himself to him. But, shewing
more severity in his case than in that of Louis the German, the Emperor,
with the alleged object of reforming his morals, caused him to be arrested
and sent to Trèves. At the same time, disclosing his true purpose, he
annexed Aquitaine to the dominions of young Charles, to whom the
magnates present at the assembly at Jonac were required to swear
fealty. Bernard of Septimania himself, whose influence excited alarm,
was deprived of his honours and benefices, which were given to Berengar,
Count of Toulouse. But the Aquitanians, always jealous of their
independence, would not submit to be deprived of the prince whom they
had come to look upon as their own. They succeeded in liberating him
from the custody of his escort, and the Frankish troops, sent in pursuit
by Louis, were unable to recapture him. The imperial army was obliged
to turn northward, harassed by the Aquitanian insurgents, and their
winter march proved disastrous. When Louis at length reached Francia
again, leaving Aquitaine in arms behind him (January 833), it was only
to learn that his two other sons, Lothar and Louis the German, were
again in rebellion against him.
Lothar and Louis no doubt dreaded lest they should meet with the
same treatment as Pepin. Moreover they could not see without feelings
of jealousy the share of young Charles in the paternal heritage so
disproportionately augmented. Again, Lothar had found a new ally in
the person of the Pope, Gregory IV (elected in 827). The latter,
though hesitating at first, had ended by allowing himself to be caught
by the prospect of bringing peace to the Empire, and of securing for the
Papacy the position of a mediating power. He had therefore decided
on accompanying Lothar when he crossed the Alps to join his brother
of Germany, and had addressed a circular letter to the bishops of Gaul
and Germany, asking them to order fasts and prayers for the success of
his enterprise. This did not hinder the greater number of the prelates
from rallying round Louis who was at Worms where his army was
concentrating. Only a few steadfast partisans of Lothar, such as
Agobard of Lyons, failed to obey the imperial summons. The two
parties seem to have been in no haste to come to blows, and for several
C. MED. H. VOL. III. CH. I.
2
## p. 18 (#64) ##############################################
18
The Field of Lies
months spent their time in negotiating and in drawing up statements of
the case on one side or the other, the sons persistently professing the
deepest respect for their father, and vowing that all their quarrel was
with his evil counsellors. Things remained in this state until, in the
middle of June, the Emperor resolved to go and seek his sons in order
to have a personal discussion with them.
In company, then, with his supporters, he went up the left bank of
the Rhine towards Alsace where the rebels were posted, and pitched his
camp opposite theirs near Colmar, in the plain known as the Rothfeld.
Brisk negotiations were again opened between the two parties. Pope
Gregory finally went in person to the imperial camp to confer with
Louis and his adherents. Did he exert his influence over the bishops
who up to then had seemed resolved to stand by their Emperor? Or
did the promises made by the sons work upon the magnates who still
gathered round Louis ? Whatever may be the explanation, a general
defection set in. Within a few days the Emperor found himself deserted
by all his followers and left almost alone. The place which was the
scene of this shameful betrayal is traditionally known as the Lügenfeld,
the Field of Lies. Louis was constrained to advise the few prelates who
still kept faith with him, such as Aldric of Le Mans or Moduin of
Autun, to follow the universal example. He himself, with his wife, his
illegitimate brother Drogo and young Charles, surrendered to Lothar.
The latter declared his father deposed from his authority and claimed
the Empire as his own by right. He made use of it to share dignities
and honours among his chief partisans. In order to give some show of
satisfaction to his brothers, he added to Pepin's share the wide duchy
of Maine, and to Louis's Saxony, Thuringia and Alsace. Judith was
sent under a strong guard to Tortona in Italy, and Charles the Bald to
the monastery of Prüm. After this, Pepin and Louis the German
returned to their respective states, while the Pope, perhaps disgusted
by the scenes he had just witnessed, quitted Lothar and betook himself
directly to Rome.
Louis had been temporarily immured in the monastery of St Médard
at Soissons. The assembly held by Lothar at Compiègne was not of
itself competent to decree the deposition of the old Emperor, in spite
of the accusations brought against him by Ebbo, Archbishop of Rheims.
Lothar was forced to confine himself to bringing sufficient pressure to
bear upon his father (through the agency of churchmen of the rebel
party sent to Soissons) to induce him to acknowledge himself guilty of
offences which rendered him unworthy of retaining power. But not
satisfied with his deposition the bishops forced him besides to undergo a
public humiliation. In the church of Notre-Dame at Compiègne in the
presence of the assembled magnates and bishops, Louis, prostrate upon
a hair cloth before the altar, was compelled to read the form of confession
drawn up by his enemies, in which he owned himself guilty of sacrilege,
## p. 19 (#65) ##############################################
Restoration of Louis the Pious
19
as having transgressed the commands of the Church and violated the
oaths that he had sworn; of homicide, as having caused the death of
Bernard; and of perjury, as having broken the pact instituted to preserve
the peace of the Empire and the Church. The document containing the
text of this confession was then laid upon the altar, while the Emperor,
stripped of his baldric, the emblem of the warrior (knight or miles), and
clothed in the garb of a penitent, was removed under close supervision
first to Soissons, then to the neighbourhood of Compiègne, and finally
to Aix where the new Emperor was to spend the winter.
But by the end of 833, dissension was beginning to make itself felt
among the victors. Louis's half-brothers, Hugh and Drogo, who had fled
to Louis the German, were exhorting him to come over to the party of
his father and of Judith, whose sister, Emma, he had married in 827.
Louis the German's first step was to intercede with Lothar to obtain a
mitigation of the treatment meted out to the imprisoned Emperor.
The attempt failed, and only produced a widening of the breach be-
tween the two brothers. A reaction of feeling began in favour of the
captive sovereign. The famous theologian Raban Maur, Abbot of Fulda
and later Archbishop of Mayence (847–56), published an apologia on
his behalf, in answer to a treatise in which Agobard of Lyons had
just refurbished the old calumnies which had been widely circulated
against Judith. Louis the German made overtures to Pepin, who was
no more disposed than himself to recognise any disproportionate authority
in Lothar, and before long the two kings agreed to summon their
followers to march to the help of their father. Lothar, not feeling
himself safe in Austrasia, went to Saint-Denis where he had called upon
his host to assemble. But the nobles of his party deserted him in his
turn. He was compelled to set Louis the Pious and young Charles at
liberty and to retreat upon Vienne on the Rhone, while the bishops and
magnates present at Saint-Denis decreed the restoration of Louis to his
former dignity, reinvesting him with his crown and his weapons, the
insignia of his authority. In charters and documents he now reassumes
the imperial style: Hludowicus, divina repropiciante clementia, imperator
augustus.
On leaving Saint-Denis Louis repaired to Quierzy, where he was
joined by Pepin and Louis the German. Judith, who had been with-
drawn from her prison by the magnates devoted to the Emperor, also
returned to Gaul. Meanwhile Lothar was preparing to carry on the
struggle. Lambert and Matfrid, his most zealous supporters, had raised
an army in his name on the March of Brittany, and defeated and killed
the counts sent against them by the Emperor. Lothar, who had rallied
his partisans, came to join them in the neighbourhood of Orleans.
There he awaited the arrival of the Emperor, who was still in company
with his other two sons. As on similar occasions, no battle was fought.
Lothar, realising the inadequacy of his forces, made his submission and
CH, I.
2-2
## p. 20 (#66) ##############################################
20
Submission of Lothar
4
appeared before his father promising never to offend again. He was
obliged to pledge himself also to be content, for the future, with “ the
kingdom of Italy, such as it had been granted by Charlemagne to
Pepin,” with the obligation of protecting the Holy See. Further, he
was never to cross the Alps again without his father's consent. His
partisans, Lambert and Matfrid, were permitted to follow him into his
new kingdom, forfeiting the benefices they possessed in Gaul.
Next year (835) an assembly at Thionville again solemnly annulled
the decrees of that of Compiègne, and declared Louis to be “ re-established
in the honours of his ancestors, henceforth to be regarded by all
men as their lord and emperor. ” A fresh ceremony took place at Metz,
when the imperial crown was again set upon his head. At the same
time the assembly at Thionville had decreed penalties against the bishops
who had deserted their sovereign. Ebbo of Rheims was compelled to
read publicly a formulary containing the acknowledgment of his treason
and his renunciation of his dignity. He was confined at Fulda.
Agobard of Lyons, Bernard of Vienne, and Bartholomew of Narbonne
were condemned as contumacious and declared deposed. The Emperor
attempted to take advantage of this returning prosperity to restore
some degree of order in the affairs of his kingdoms, after the fiery
trial of several years of civil war. At the assembly of Tramoyes (Ain)
in June 835 he decreed the sending of missi into the different provinces
to suppress acts of pillage. At that of Aix (beginning of 836) measures
were taken to secure the regular exercise of the power of the bishops.
A little earlier an attempt had been made to prevail on Pepin of
Aquitaine to restore the Church property which he and his followers
had usurped. But it is doubtful whether these measures produced any
great effect. On the other hand, a fresh peril became daily more
threatening, namely the incursions of the Scandinavian pirates. In 834
they had ravaged the coasts of Frisia, pillaging the sea-coasts as
they went, and penetrating at least as far as the island of Noirmoutier
on the Atlantic. Henceforth they reappear almost every year, and in
835 they defeated and slew Reginald, Count of Herbauges. In the
same year they plundered the great maritime mart of Dorestad on the
North Sea. Next year, 836, they again visited Frisia, and their king
Horic had even the insolence to demand the wergild of such of his
subjects as had been slain or captured during their piratical operations.
In 837 fresh ravages took place, and the Emperor in vain attempted to
check them by sending out missi charged with the defence of the coasts,
and especially by building ships to pursue the enemy. Horic even
claimed (838) the sovereignty of Frisia, and it was not till 839 that
hostilities were temporarily suspended by a treaty.
Nor was the internal peace of the Empire much more secure. Louis
and Judith appear to have reverted to the idea of a reconciliation with
Lothar, looking upon him as the destined protector of his young brother
## p. 21 (#67) ##############################################
Death of Pepin of Aquitaine
21
a
and godson, Charles. As early as 836 negotiations were begun with a
view to the renewal of amicable relations between the King of Italy and
his father. But sickness prevented Lothar from attending the assembly
at Worms to which he had been summoned. However, at the end of
837 at the assembly held at Aix the Emperor elaborated a new scheme
of division which added to Charles's kingdom the greater part of Belgium
with the country lying between the Meuse and the Seine as far as
Burgundy. This project was certain to alarm Louis the German, whom
we find at the opening of the next year (838) making overtures in his
turn to Lothar with whom he had an interview at Trent. This displeased
the Emperor and, at the Nimeguen assembly, June 838, he punished
Louis by depriving him of part of his territory, leaving him only
Bavaria. On the other hand, in the month of September young Charles
at the age of fifteen had just attained his majority; such was the
law of the Ripuarian Franks followed by the Carolingian family. He
therefore received the baldric of a knight, and was given at Quierzy a
portion of the lands between Loire and Seine. An attempt made by
Louis to regain possession of the lands on the right bank of the Rhine
met with no success. The Emperor in his turn crossed the river and
forced his son to take refuge in Bavaria while he himself after a demon-
stration in Alemannia returned to Worms, where Lothar came from
Pavia to see him and went through a solemn ceremony of reconciliation
with him.
The death of Pepin of Aquitaine (13 December 838) seemed to simplify
the question of division and succession, for the new partition scheme
drawn up at Worms utterly ignored his son, Pepin II. Apart from
Bavaria, which with a few neighbouring pagi was left to Louis the
German, the empire of Charlemagne was cut into two parts. The
dividing line running from north to south followed the Meuse, touched
the Moselle at Toul, crossed Burgundy, and having on the west
Langres, Châlon, Lyons, Geneva, followed the line of the Alps and ended
at the Mediterranean. Lothar, as eldest son, was given the right to
choose, and took for himself the eastern portion; the other fell to Charles,
After his father's death, Lothar was also to bear the title of Emperor,
but apparently without the prerogatives attached to it by the settlement
of 817. It was to be his duty to protect Charles, while the latter was
bound to pay all due honour to his elder brother and godfather. These
obligations once fulfilled, each prince was to be absolute master in his
own kingdom.
Aquitaine was thus in theory vested in Charles the Bald, but several
guerilla bands still held the field in the name of Pepin II. The
Emperor went thither in person to secure the recognition of his son.
Setting out for Châlon where the host had been summoned to meet
(1 September 839) he made his way to Clermont. Here a party of
Aquitanian lords came to make their submission to their new sovereign.
CH. I.
## p. 22 (#68) ##############################################
22
Death of Louis the Pious
This did not, however, imply that the country was pacified, for many of
the counts still maintained their resistance.
But Louis the Pious had now to renew the struggle with the King of
Germany, who as well as Pepin was injured by the partition of 839, and
had invaded Saxony and Thuringia. The Emperor advanced against
him and had no great difficulty in thrusting him back into Bavaria.
But as he was returning to Worms, where his son Lothar, who had gone
back to Italy after the late partition, had been appointed to meet him,
the cough which had long tormented him became worse. Having fallen
dangerously ill at Salz, he had himself moved to an island in the Rhine
opposite the palace of Ingelheim. Here he breathed his last in his tent
on 20 June 840 in the arms of his half-brother, Drogo, sending his
pardon to his son Louis. Before his death he had proclaimed Lothar
Emperor, commending Judith and Charles to his protection and ordering
that the insignia of the imperial authority, the sceptre, crown and sword,
should be sent to him.
The dying Emperor might well have despaired of unity for Charle-
magne's Empire and have foreseen that the civil wars of the last twenty
years would be renewed more fiercely than ever among his sons. As the
outcome of his reign was unfortunate, and as under him the first mani.
festations appeared of the two scourges which were about to destroy the
Frank Empire, the insubordination of the great lords on one side and
the Norman invasions on the other, historians have been too easily led
to accuse Louis the Pious of weakness and incapacity. He was long
known by the somewhat contemptuous epithet of the Debonnaire (the
good-natured, the easy-going). But in truth his life-story shews him to
have been capable of perseverance and at times even of energy and re-
solution, although as a rule the energy was of no long duration. Louis
the Pious found himself confronted by opponents, who took his clemency
for a sign of weakness, and knew how to exploit his humility for
their own profit by making him appear an object of contempt. But
above all, circumstances were adverse to him. He was the loser in the
long struggle with his sons and with the magnates ; this final ill-success
rather than his own character explains the severe judgment so often
passed upon the son of the great Charles.
## p. 23 (#69) ##############################################
23
CHAPTER II.
THE CAROLINGIAN KINGDOMS (840-877).
The death of Louis the Pious and his clearly expressed last wishes
secured the imperial dignity to Lothar. But the situation had not been
defined with any precision. The last partition, decreed in 839, had made
important alterations in the shares assigned to the three brothers. Now
what Lothar hastened to claim was “the empire such as it had formerly
been entrusted to him," namely, the territorial power and the pre-eminent
position secured to him by the Constitutio of 817, with his two brothers
reduced to the position of vassal kinglets. To make good these claims
Lothar had the support of the majority of the prelates, always faithful,
in the main, to the principle of unity. But the great lay lords were
guided only by considerations of self-interest. In a general way, each of
the three brothers had on his side those who had already lived under his
rule, and whom he had succeeded in winning over by grants of honours
and benefices. Louis had thus secured the Germans, Bavarians, Thu-
ringians and Saxons, and Charles the Neustrians, Burgundians, and
such of the Aquitanians as had not espoused the cause of Pepin II.
But it would be a mistake to see in the wars which followed the death
of Louis the Pious a struggle between races. As a contemporary
writes, “the combatants did not differ either in their weapons, their
,
customs, or their race. They fought one another because they belonged
to opposite camps, and these camps stood for nothing but coalitions of
personal interests.
Lothar received the news of his father's death as he was on his
way to Worms. He betook himself to Strasbourg, and in that town
the oath of fealty was sworn to him by many of the magnates of ancient
Francia who were still loyal to the Carolingian family and to the
system of a united empire, being vaguely aware that this system would
secure the predominance of the Austrasians from among whom Charles
and Louis the Pious had drawn almost all the counts of their vast
empire. But Louis the German, on his part, had occupied the country
as far as the Rhine, and Charles the Bald was also making ready for the
struggle. Lothar had not resolution enough to attack his two brothers
one after the other and force them to accept the re-establishment of the
Constitutio of 817. He first had an interview beyond the Rhine with
CH. II.
## p. 24 (#70) ##############################################
24
Battle of Fontenoy
1
a
Louis, concluding a truce with him until a forthcoming assembly should
meet, at which the conditions of a permanent peace were to be discussed.
Then he marched against Charles, many of the magnates of the district
between the Seine and the Loire joining him, among others Gerard,
Count of Paris, and Hilduin, Abbot of Saint-Denis. But Charles, being
skilfully advised by Judith and other counsellors, among them an
illegitimate grandson of Charles the Great, the historian Nithard,
opened negotiations and succeeded in obtaining terms which left him
provisionally in possession of Aquitaine, Septimania, Provence and six
counties between the Loire and the Seine. Lothar, besides, arranged
to meet him at the palace of Attigny in the ensuing May, whither
Louis the German was also summoned to arrange for a definitive peace.
.
The winter of 840–841 was spent by the three brothers in enlisting
partisans and in gathering troops. But when spring came, Lothar
neglected to go to Attigny. Only Louis and Charles met there. An
alliance between these two, both equally threatened by the claims of
their elder brother, was inevitable. Their armies made a junction in
the district of Châlons-sur-Marne, while that of Lothar mustered in the
Auxerrois. Louis and Charles marched together against the Emperor,
proposing terms of agreement as they came, and sending embassy after
embassy to exhort him “to restore peace to the Church of God. ”
Lothar was anxious to spin matters out, for he was expecting the
arrival of Pepin II (who had declared for him) and of his contingent
of Aquitanians, or at least of southern Aquitanians, for those of the
centre and north were induced by Judith to join Charles the Bald.
On 24 June, Pepin effected his junction with the Emperor. The latter
now thought himself strong enough to wish for a battle. He sent a
haughty message to his younger brothers, reminding them that “the
imperial dignity had been committed to him, and that he would know
how to fulfil the duties it laid upon him. ” On the morning of the 25th,
the fight began at Fontenoy in Puisaye, and a desperate struggle it
proved. The centre of the imperial army, where Lothar appeared in
person, stood firm at first against the troops of Louis the German. On
the left wing the Aquitanians of Pepin II long held out, but Charles
the Bald, reinforced by a body of Burgundians who had come up,
under the command of Warin, Count of Mâcon, was victorious against
the right wing, and his success involved the defeat of Lothar's army.
The number of the dead was very great; a chronicler puts it at 40,000.
These figures are exaggerated, but it is plain that the imagination of
contemporaries was vividly impressed by the carnage “ wrought on that
accursed day, which ought no longer to be counted in the
1 Much discussion has arisen over the identification of the place which Nithard
calls Fontanetum. The various contentions are summed up in Charles le Chauve
(Lot and Halphen), p. 29, no. 6. It is nearly certain that the Fontenoy in question
is that situated in dép. Yonne, arr. Auxerre, cant. Saint-Sauveur.
year, which
## p. 25 (#71) ##############################################
Oath of Strasbourg
25
should be banished from the memory of men, and be for ever deprived
the light of the sun and of the beams of morning,” as the poet
Angilbert says, adding that “the garments of the slain Frankish
warriors whitened the plain as the birds usually do in autumn. ” At
the end of the ninth century, the Lotharingian chronicler, Regino of
Prüm, echoes the tradition according to which the battle of Fontenoy
decimated the Frankish nobility and left the Empire defenceless against
the ravages of the Northmen.
In reality, the battle had not been decisive. Louis and Charles
might see the Divine judgment in the issue of the fight, and cause the
bishops of their faction to declare that the Almighty had given sentence
in their favour, yet, as the annalist of Lobbes put it, “great carnage
had taken place, but neither of the two adversaries had triumphed. ”
Lothar, who was stationed at Aix-la-Chapelle, was ready to carry on the
struggle, and was seeking fresh partisans, even making appeal to the
Danish pirates whom he settled in the island of Walcheren, while at
the same time he was sending emissaries into Saxony, to stir up in-
surrections among the free or semi-free populations there (the frilingi
and lazzi) against the nobility who were of Frankish origin. His two
brothers having again separated, he attempted to re-open the struggle
by marching in the first instance against Louis. He occupied Mayence,
and awaited the attack of the Saxon army. But on learning that
Charles, on his side, had collected troops and was marching upon Aix,
Lothar quitted Mayence and fell back upon Worms. Then, in his
turn, he took the offensive against his youngest brother and compelled
him to give back as far as the banks of the Seine. But Charles took
up a strong position in the neighbourhood of Paris and Saint-Denis.
Lothar dared not bring on a battle, so he fell back slowly upon Aix,
which he had regained by the beginning of February, 842.
Meanwhile his two brothers drew their alliance closer, and Charles,
with this object, had made an appeal to Louis. The latter went to
Strasbourg, and there on 14 February, the two kings, surrounded by
their men, had a memorable interview. After having addressed their
,
followers gathered together in the palace of Strasbourg, and recalled to
them the crimes of Lothar, who had not consented to recognise the
judgment of God after his defeat at Fontenoy, but had persisted in
causing confusion in the Christian world, they swore mutual friendship
and loyal assistance to one another. Louis, as the elder, was the first
to take the following oath in the Romance tongue, so as to be under-
stood by his brother's subjects: “For the love of God and for the
Christian people, and our common salvation, so far as God gives me
knowledge and power, I will defend my brother Charles with my aid
and in everything, as one's duty is in right to defend one's brother,
on condition that he shall do as much for me, and I will make no
agreement with my brother Lothar which shall, with my consent, be
1
CH. II.
## p. 26 (#72) ##############################################
26
Treaty of Verdun
M
to the prejudice of my brother Charles. ” Thereupon Charles repeated
the same formula in the Teutonic tongue used by his brother's subjects.
Finally, the two armies made the following declaration each in their
own language. “If Louis (or Charles) observes the oath which he has
sworn to his brother Charles (or Louis) and if Charles (or Louis) my
lord, for his part, infringe his oath, if I am not able to dissuade him
from it, neither I nor anyone whom I can hinder shall lend him support
against Louis (or Charles). ” The two brothers then spent several days
together at Strasbourg, prodigal of outward tokens of their amity,
offering each other feasts and warlike sports, sleeping at night under
each other's roofs, spending their days together and settling their
business in common. In the month of March they advanced against
Lothar, and by way of Worms and Mayence reached Coblence, where
the Emperor had collected his troops. His army, panic-stricken, dis-
banded without even attempting to defend the passage of the Moselle.
Louis and Charles entered Aix, which Lothar abandoned, to make his
way to Lyons through Burgundy. His two brothers followed him.
Having reached Châlon-sur-Saône they received envoys from the
Emperor acknowledging his offences against them, and proposing peace
on condition that they granted him a third of the Empire, with some
territorial addition on account of the imperial title which their father
had bestowed on him, and of the imperial dignity which their grand-
father had joined to the kingship of the Franks. Lothar was still
surrounded by numerous supporters. On the other hand, the magnates,
fatigued by years of war, were anxious for peace. Louis and Charles
accepted in principle the proposals of their elder brother.
On 15 June an interview took place between the three sovereigns,
on an island in the Saône near Mâcon, which led to the conclusion of
a truce. Louis made use of it to crush the insurrection of a league
of Saxon peasants, the Stellinga, which the Emperor had secretly
encouraged. In the month of November the truce was renewed, and
a commission of a hundred and twenty members having met at Coblence,
charged with the duty of arranging the partition of the kingdoms
among the three brothers, the division was definitively concluded at
Verdun, in the month of August 843. The official document has been
lost, but it is nevertheless possible, from the information given by
the chroniclers, to state its main provisions. The Empire was divided
from East to West into three sections, and “Lothar received the middle
kingdom,” i. e. Italy and the region lying between the Alps, the Aar
and the Rhine on the East (together with the Ripuarian counties
on the lower right bank of the latter river) and the Rhone, the Saône
and the Scheldt on the West. These made up a strip of territory
about a thousand miles in length by one hundred and thirty in breadth,
reaching from the North Sea to the Duchy of Benevento. Louis re-
ceived the countries beyond the Rhine, except Frisia which was left to
## p. 27 (#73) ##############################################
Treaty of Verdun: its importance
27
Lothar, while west of that river, “because of the abundance of wine”
and in order that he should have his share of what was originally
Austrasia, he was given in addition the dioceses of Spires, Worms and
Mayence. Charles kept the rest as far as Spain, nothing being said
as to Pepin II, whose rights the Emperor found himself unable to
enforce. This division at first sight appears fairly simple, but in
reality the frontiers it assigned to Lothar's kingdom were largely
artificial, since the border-line by no means followed the course of the
rivers, but cutting off from the Emperor's share three counties on the
left bank of the Rhine, allowed him in compensation on the left bank
of the Meuse the districts of Mézières and Mouzon, the Dormois, the
Verdunois, the Barrois, the Ornois with Bassigny, and on the right
bank of the Rhone, the Vivarais and the Uzège with, of course, the
whole of the transrhodanian parts of the counties of Vienne and Lyons.
Each of the three brothers swore to secure to the other two the share
thus adjudged to them, and to maintain concord, and “peace having
been thus made and confirmed by oath, each one returned to his
kingdom to govern and defend it. ”
The Treaty of Verdun marks a first stage in the dissolution of the
Carolingian Empire. Doubtless it would be idle to see in it an uprising
of ancient national feelings against the unity which had been imposed
by the strong hand of Charlemagne. In reality, these old nationalities
had no more existence on the morrow of the treaty than on the eve of
it. It is true that the three ancient kingdoms of Lombardy, Bavaria
and Aquitaine formed nuclei of the states set up in 843. But Lothar's
portion included races as different as those dwelling round the Lower
Rhine and those of central Italy. Louis, besides Germans, had Slav
subjects, and even some Franks who spoke the Romance tongue. Charles
became the ruler of the greater part of the Franks of Francia, the
country between the Rhine and the Loire which was to give its name
to his kingdom, but his Breton and Aquitanian vassals had nothing to
connect them closely with the Neustrians or the Burgundians. The
partition of 843 was the logical outcome of the mistakes of Louis the
Pious who, for the sake of Charles, his Benjamin, had sacrificed in
his interests that unity of the Empire which it had been the object
of the Constitutio of 817 to safeguard, while at the same time it gave
the younger sons of Louis the position of kings. None the less, the
date 843 is a convenient one in history to mark a dividing line, to
register the beginning of the individual life of modern nations. Louis
had received the greater part of the lands in which the Teutonic
language was spoken; Charles reigned almost exclusively (setting aside
the Bretons) over populations of the Romance tongue. This difference
only became more accentuated as time went on. On the other hand,
the frequent changes of sovereignty in Lorraine have permanently made
of ancient Austrasia a debateable territory. The consequences of the
CH. II.
## p. 28 (#74) ##############################################
28
The Empire breaking up
own
treaty of Verdun have made themselves felt even down to our
day, since from 843 to 1920 France and Germany have contended for
portions of media Francia, the ancient home whence the companions of
Charles and Pepin went forth to conquer Gallia and Germania. But
in 843 France and Germany do not yet exist. Each sovereign looks
upon himself as a King of the Franks. None the less, there is a
Frankish kingdom of the West and a Frankish kingdom of the East,
the destinies of which will henceforth lie apart, and from this point
of view it is true to say that the grandsons of Charles, the universal
Emperor, have each his country.
Even contemporary writers realised the importance of the division
made by the Treaty of Verdun in the history of the Frankish monarchy.
The following justly famous verses by the deacon Florus of Lyons sum
up the situation as it appeared to the advocates of the ancien régime of
imperial unity:
Floruit egregium claro diademate regnum:
Princeps unus erat, populus quoque subditus unus,
At nunc tantus apex tanto de culmine lapsus,
Cunctorum teritur pedibus ; diademate nudus
Perdidit imperii pariter nomenque decusque,
Et regnum unitum concidit sorte triformi.
Induperator ibi prorsus jam nemo putatur ;
Pro rege est regulus, pro regno fragmina regnil.
For the old conception of a united Empire in which kings acted
merely as lieutenants of the Emperor, was being substituted the idea
of a new form of government, that of three kings, equal in dignity and
in effective power. Lothar, it is true, retained the imperial title, but
had been unable to secure, by obtaining a larger extent of territory,
any real superiority over his brothers. He possessed, indeed, the two
capitals of the Empire, Rome and Aix, but this circumstance did not,
in the ninth century, carry all the weight in men's minds that has since
been attributed to it. Besides this advantage in dignity was largely
counterbalanced by the inferiority arising from the weakness of geo-
graphical position which marked Lothar's long strip of territory, peopled
by varying races with varying interests, threatened on the north by the
Danes, and on the south by the Saracens, over the whole of which
it was barely possible that he could exercise his direct authority. As
to the Emperor's brothers, they were naturally disinclined to recognise
in him any superiority over them. In their negotiations with him they
regard themselves as his equals (peers, pares). Beyond his title of king
they give him no designation save that of “elder brother” and the very
word imperium rarely occurs in documents.
3
1
Querela de divisione imperii in M. H. G. , Poet. Lat. , Vol. 11. p. 559 et sqq.
)
## p. 29 (#75) ##############################################
Part played by the Emperor
29
Yet to say that the Empire has completely disappeared would be an
exaggeration. One of the chief prerogatives of the Emperor is still
maintained. It was his function not merely to safeguard the unity of
the Frankish monarchy, but his duty was also to protect the Church and
the Holy See, that is, to take care that religious peace was preserved,
at all events, throughout Western Christendom, and, in concert with
the Pope, to govern Rome and the Papal States. As Lothar had been
entrusted with these duties during his father's lifetime, he would be more
familiar with them than any other person. “The Pope," he said himself,
"put the sword into my hand to defend the altar and the throne,” and the
very first measure of his administration had been the Roman Constitution
of 824 which defined the relations of the two powers. These imperial
rights and duties had not been made to vanish by the new situation
created in other respects for the Emperor in 843. If Lothar does not
seem to have given any large share of his attention to ecclesiastical affairs,
on the other hand he is found intervening, either personally or through
his son Louis, in papal elections. In 844 Sergius II, who had been
consecrated without the Emperor's participation, met with bitter re-
proaches for having thus neglected to observe the constitution of 824.
On his death (847) the people of Rome, alarmed at the risk involved in
& vacancy of the Holy See while Saracen invasions were threatening,
again ignored the imperial regulations at the election of Leo IV. But
the latter hastened to write to Lothar and Louis II to make excuses for
the irregular course taken by the Romans. In 855 the election of
Benedict III took place, all forms being duly observed, and was respect-
fully notified to the two Augusti through the medium of their missi.
The measures taken by Lothar against the Saracens of Italy were dictated
as much by the necessity of defending his own states as by a sense of his
position as Protector of the Holy See, but there were one or two
occasions on which he appears to have attempted to exercise some
authority on matters ecclesiastical in the dominions of his brother
Charles.
It is at least highly probable that it was at his request that Sergius II,
in 844, granted to Drogo Bishop of Metz, who had already under colour
of his personal claims been invested with archiepiscopal dignity, the office
of Vicar Apostolic throughout the Empire north of the Alps, with the
right of convoking General Councils, and of summoning all ecclesiastical
causes before his tribunal, previous to any appeal being made to Rome.
This, from the spiritual point of view, was to give control to the
Emperor, through the medium of one of his prelates, over ecclesiastical
affairs in the kingdoms of his two brothers. But as early as the month
of December 844, a synod of the bishops of the Western Kingdom at Ver
(near Compiègne) declared, with abundance of personally complimentary
expressions towards Drogo, that his primatial authority must be first of
all recognised by a general assembly of the bishops concerned. Such an
CA. II.
## p. 30 (#76) ##############################################
30
“The system of concord”
assembly, as may be imagined, never came together, and the Archbishop
of Metz was forced to resign himself to a purely honorary vicariate.
Lothar met with no better success in his attempt to restore his ally,
Ebbo, to his archiepiscopal throne at Rheims, whence he had been ex-
pelled in 835 as a traitor to the Emperor Louis, though no successor had
yet been appointed. The Pope turned a deaf ear to all representations
on Ebbo's behalf, and the Council at Ver entreated Charles to provide
the Church of Rheims with a pastor without delay. This pastor proved
to be the celebrated Hincmar? who for nearly forty years was to be the
most strenuous and illustrious representative of the episcopate of Gaul.
Thus the attempts made by Lothar to obtain anything in the nature
of supremacy outside the borders of his own kingdom had met with no
success. They even had a tendency to bring about a renewal of hostilities
.
between him and his youngest brother. But the bishops surrounding
the three kings had a clear conception of the Treaty of Verdun as having
been made not only to settle the territorial problem, but also to secure
the continuance of peace and order. The magnates themselves were
weary of civil war, and had, besides, enemies from without to contend
against, Slavs, Saracens, Bretons and, above all, Northmen. They were of
one mind with the prelates in saying to the three brothers “ You must
abstain from secret machinations to one another's hurt, and you must
support and aid one another. ” Consequently a new system was established
called with perfect correctness“ the system of concord,” of concord secured
by frequent meetings between the three brothers.
The first of these interviews took place at Yütz, near Thionville, in
October 844, at the same time as a synod of the bishops of the three
kingdoms under the presidency of Drogo. Here the principles governing
.
the “ Carolingian fraternity ” were at once laid down. The kings, for
the future, are not to seek to injure one another, but on the contrary,
are to lend one another mutual aid and assistance against enemies from
outside.
The king most threatened at the time by enemies such as these was
Charles the Bald. In 842 the Northmen had pillaged the great com-
mercial mart of Quentovic near the river Canche. In the following
year they went up the Loire as far as Nantes which they plundered,
slaughtering the bishop during the celebration of divine service. The
Bretons, united under their leader Nomenoë, and not mueh impressed
by an expedition sent against them in 843, were invading Frankish
| Hincmar, who was born during the first years of the ninth century, was at this
time a monk at Saint-Denis and entrusted with the government of the Abbeys of
Notre-Dame by Compiègne and Saint-Germer de Flay. But Charles had already
employed him on various missions, and he seems for some years to have held an
important position among the king's counsellors.
2 Chapter XIII deals with the Vikings. They are therefore mentioned here
only so far as is necessary to an understanding of the general history of the Frankish
kingdoms.
## p. 31 (#77) ##############################################
Conflicts and invasions
31
territory. Lambert, one of the Counts of the March, created to keep them
in check, had risen in revolt and was making common cause with them.
On the other hand, the Aquitanians, faithful to Pepin II, the king they
had chosen, refused to recognise Charles. An expedition which the king
had sent against them in the spring of 844 had failed through a check
to the siege of Toulouse, and through the execution of Charles's former
protector, Count Bernard of Septimania, who was accused of treason.
The Frankish troops, beaten by the Aquitanians on the banks of the
river Agoût, had been forced to beat a retreat without accomplishing
any useful purpose. The kings, who had met at Yütz, addressed a joint
letter to Nomenoë, Lambert and Pepin II, threatening to unite and
march against them if they persisted in their rebellion. These threats,
however, were only partially effective. Pepin agreed to do homage to
Charles, who in exchange for this profession of obedience recognised his
possession of a restricted Aquitaine, without Poitou, the Angoumois or
Saintonge. But the Bretons, for their part, refused to submit. Charles
sent against them an expedition which ended in a lamentable defeat on
the plain of Ballon, not far from Redon (22 November 845).
During the following summer Charles was compelled to sign a treaty
with Nomenoë acknowledging the independence of Brittany, and to leave
the rebel Lambert in possession of the county of Maine. A body of
Scandinavian pirates went up the Seine in 845; the king was obliged to
buy their withdrawal with a sum of money. Other Danes, led by their
king, Horic, were ravaging the dominions of Louis the German, particu-
larly Saxony. In 845 their countrymen had got possession of Hamburg
and destroyed it. At the same time Louis had to keep back his Slav
neighbours, and to send expeditions against the rebellious Obotrites
(814) and the Moravians (846). Lothar, for his part, had in 845 to
contend with a revolt of his Provençal subjects led by Fulcrad, Count of
Arles. The friendly agreement proclaimed at Yütz between the three.
brothers was a necessity of the situation. It was nevertheless disturbed
by the action of a vassal of Charles the Bald, named Gilbert (Giselbert),
who carried off a daughter of Lothar I, taking her with him to Aquitaine
where he married her (846). Great was the Emperor's wrath against his
youngest brother, whom he accused, in spite of all his protests, of com-
plicity with the abductor. He renewed his intrigues at Rome on behalf
of Drogo and Ebbo, and even gave shelter in his dominions to Charles,
brother of Pepin, who had again rebelled. Besides this he allowed
certain of his adherents to lead expeditions into the Western Kingdom
which were, in fact, mere plundering raids. He consented, however, in
the beginning of 847 to meet Louis and Charles in a fresh conference
which took place at Meersen near Maestricht.
Again the principle of fraternity was proclaimed, and this time it was
extended beyond the sovereigns themselves to their subjects. Further,
for the first time a provision was made which chiefly interested Lothar,
CH. II.
## p. 32 (#78) ##############################################
32
Weakness of the concord
It was
a
>
who was already concerned about the succession to his crown.
decided to guarantee to the children of any one of the three brothers
who might happen to die, the peaceful possession of their father's
kingdom. Letters or ambassadors were also ordered to be sent to the
Northmen, the Bretons and the Aquitanians. But this latter resolu-
tion, save for an advance made to King Horic, remained nearly a dead
letter. Lothar, who still cherished anger against Gilbert's suzerain,
chose to leave him in the midst of the difficulties which pressed upon
him, and even sought an alliance against him with Louis the German,
his interviews with whom become very frequent during the next few
years.
Nevertheless the position of Charles improved. The magnates of
Aquitaine, ever inconstant, had abandoned Pepin II, almost to a
man, and Charles had, as it were,
,
set a seal
upon
his entrance
into actual possession of the whole of the states which the treaty of
843 had recognised as his, by having himself solemnly crowned and
anointed at Orleans on 6 June 848 by Ganelon (Wenilo), the Arch-
bishop of Sens. Again, Gilbert had left Aquitaine and taken refuge
at the court of Louis the German. There was no longer any obstacle to
the reconciliation of Lothar with his youngest brother, which took place
in a very cordial interview between the two sovereigns at Péronne
(January 849). A little later, Louis the German, in his turn, had a
meeting with Charles, at which the two kings mutually “ recommended”
their kingdoms and the guardianship of their children to one another,
in case of the death of either. The result of all these private interviews
was a general conference held at Meersen in the spring of 851 in order
to buttress the somewhat shaky edifice of the concordia fratrum. The
principles of brotherly amity and the duty of mutual help were again
proclaimed, supplemented by a pledge given by the three brothers to
forget their resentment for the past, and, in order to avoid any further
occasions of discord, to refuse entrance into any one kingdom to such as
had disturbed the peace of any other.
having occupied Orleans, had joined them at Verberie, N. E. of Senlis.
Louis the German had done likewise. As to Lothar, he was lingering
in Italy, perhaps to watch what turn events would take. But any
resistance was impossible for Louis, because the whole weight of military
force veas on the side of the conspirators. The latter declared that they
had no quarrel with the Emperor, but only with his wife, whom they
accused of a guilty connexion with Bernard. They demanded therefore
that Judith should be exiled and her accomplices punished. Louis,
sending Bernard for refuge to his city of Barcelona, and leaving the
Empress at Aix, went to meet the rebels, who were then at Compiègne
and surrendered himself into their hands. Judith, who had set out to
join him, fearing violence took shelter in the church of Notre-Dame at
Laon. Two of the counts who had espoused Pepin's cause, Warin of
## p. 15 (#61) ##############################################
Disloyalty of Lothar
15
Mâcon and Lambert of Nantes, came up and forcibly removed her.
After having detained her a prisoner for some time with her husband,
they finally shut her up in a convent at Poitiers. Her two brothers,
Conrad and Rudolf, were tonsured and relegated to Aquitanian monas-
teries.
In these circumstances, Lothar, dreading no doubt that he might
be ignored if a division should take place without him, arrived at
Compiègne and at once put himself at the head of the movement, his
first step being to resume his title of joint-Emperor. Louis the Pious
seemed inclined to dismiss Bernard and restore the former government.
Lothar's desires went beyond this, and he surrounded his father with
monks instructed to persuade him to embrace the religious life, for which
he had formerly shewn some inclination. But Louis did not fall in with
this project. He was secretly negotiating with Louis the German and
Pepin, promising them an increase of territory if they would abandon
the cause of Lothar. On their side, the two princes were no more
inclined to be Lothar's subjects than their father's. The Emperor and
his supporters succeeded in gathering a new assembly at Nimeguen in
the autumn, at which were present many of the Saxon and German
lords who were always loyal to Louis. The reaction beginning in favour
of the Emperor now shewed itself plainly. Louis was declared to be
re-established in his former authority. It was also decided to recall
Judith. On the other hand, several of the abettors of the revolt were
arrested. Wala was obliged to surrender the abbey of Corbie. The
Arch-Chaplain Hilduin, Abbot of St Denis, was banished to Paderborn.
Lothar, in alarm, accepted the pardon offered him by his father and
shewed himself at the assembly beside the Emperor in the character of
a dutiful son.
The assembly convoked at Aix-la-Chapelle (February 831) to pass
definitive sentence on the rebels, adjudged them the penalty of death,
which Louis the Pious commuted to imprisonment and exile, together
with confiscation of goods. Lothar himself was obliged to subscribe to
the condemnation of his former partisans. Thus Hilduin lost the
abbeys he had possessed and was banished to Corvey, Wala was impris-
oned in the neighbourhood of the Lake of Geneva, Matfrid and Elisachar
exiled. At the same time the Empress, after solemnly clearing herself
by oath from the accusations levelled against her, was declared restored
to her former position. Her brothers, Conrad and Rudolf, quitted the
monasteries in which they had been temporarily confined, and recovered
their dignities. Contrariwise the name of Lothar again disappears from
the parchments containing the imperial diplomas, the eldest son losing
his privileged position as joint-Emperor, and being reduced to that
of king of Italy, while in accordance with the promise he had made
them Louis the Pious increased the shares of his younger sons in the
inheritance. To Pepin's Aquitanian kingdom were annexed the districts
CH. 1.
## p. 16 (#62) ##############################################
16
Revolt of Louis the German
between the Loire and the Seine, and, to the north of the latter river,
the Meaux country, with the Amiénois and Ponthieu as far as the sea.
Louis of Bavaria saw his portion enlarged by the addition of Saxony
and Thuringia and the greater part of the pagi which make up modern
Belgium and the Netherlands. Charles, besides Alemannia, received Bur-
gundy, Provence and Gothia with a slice of Francia, and in particular,
the important province of Rheims. Nevertheless, as these arrangements
had no validity until Louis the Pious should have disappeared from the
scene, they made little or no change in the actual position of the three
princes, especially as the Emperor expressly reserved to himself the
power to give additional advantage to “any one of our three above-
mentioned sons, who, desirous of pleasing in the first place God, and
secondly ourselves, should distinguish himself by his obedience and
zeal” by withdrawing somewhat “from the portion of that one of his
brothers who shall have neglected to please us. " Yet the sentences
pronounced at Aix-la-Chapelle were to be of no lasting effect. At
Ingelheim, in the beginning of May, several of the former partisans of
Lothar were pardoned. Hilduin, in particular, regained his abbey
of St Denis. On the other hand, Bernard, though like Judith he had
purged himself by oath before the assembly at Thionville from the
accusations made against him, had not been reinstated in his office at
court. On the contrary, it would seem that Louis the Pious made
endeavours to reconcile himself with Lothar, perhaps under the influence
of Judith, who was ever ready to cherish the idea that her young son
might find a protector in his eldest brother. The Emperor was, besides,
in a fair way towards a breach with Pepin. The latter being summoned
to the assembly at Thionville (autumn 831) had delayed under various
pretexts to present himself, and when he did resolve to appear before
the Emperor at Aix (end of 831) his father received him with so small
a show of favour that Pepin either feared or pretended to fear for his
safety, and at the end of December secretly betook himself again to
Aquitaine, disregarding the prohibition, which had been laid
upon
him. Louis decided to take strong measures against him and called an
assembly to meet at Orleans in 832, to which Lothar and Louis the
German were both summoned. From Orleans an expedition was to be
sent south of the Loire.
But at the beginning of 832, the Emperor learned that Louis the
German, perhaps fearing to share the fate of Pepin, or instigated by
some of the leaders of the revolt of 830, was in a state of rebellion,
and at the head of his Bavarians, reinforced by a contingent of Slavs,
had invaded Alemannia (the apanage of Charles) where many of the
nobles had ranged themselves on his side. Relinquishing for the moment
his Aquitanian project, Louis summoned the host of the Franks and
Saxons to muster at Mayence. The leudes eagerly responded to his
appeal, and Louis the German, who was encamped at Lorsch, was
## p. 17 (#63) ##############################################
Provisions for Charles the Bald
17
obliged to recognise that he had no means of resisting the superior
forces at his father's disposal. He therefore retreated. The imperial
army slowly followed his line of march, and by the month of May had
reached Augsburg. Here it was that Louis the German came to seek
his father and make his submission to him, swearing never in future to
renew his attempts at revolt.
Louis then turned towards Aquitaine. From Frankfort, where he
was joined by Lothar, he convoked a new host to meet at Orleans on
1 September. Thence he crossed the Loire, and ravaging the country
as he went, reached Limoges. He halted for some time to the north of
this town, at the royal residence of Jonac in La Marche, where Pepin
came to him and in his turn submitted himself to him. But, shewing
more severity in his case than in that of Louis the German, the Emperor,
with the alleged object of reforming his morals, caused him to be arrested
and sent to Trèves. At the same time, disclosing his true purpose, he
annexed Aquitaine to the dominions of young Charles, to whom the
magnates present at the assembly at Jonac were required to swear
fealty. Bernard of Septimania himself, whose influence excited alarm,
was deprived of his honours and benefices, which were given to Berengar,
Count of Toulouse. But the Aquitanians, always jealous of their
independence, would not submit to be deprived of the prince whom they
had come to look upon as their own. They succeeded in liberating him
from the custody of his escort, and the Frankish troops, sent in pursuit
by Louis, were unable to recapture him. The imperial army was obliged
to turn northward, harassed by the Aquitanian insurgents, and their
winter march proved disastrous. When Louis at length reached Francia
again, leaving Aquitaine in arms behind him (January 833), it was only
to learn that his two other sons, Lothar and Louis the German, were
again in rebellion against him.
Lothar and Louis no doubt dreaded lest they should meet with the
same treatment as Pepin. Moreover they could not see without feelings
of jealousy the share of young Charles in the paternal heritage so
disproportionately augmented. Again, Lothar had found a new ally in
the person of the Pope, Gregory IV (elected in 827). The latter,
though hesitating at first, had ended by allowing himself to be caught
by the prospect of bringing peace to the Empire, and of securing for the
Papacy the position of a mediating power. He had therefore decided
on accompanying Lothar when he crossed the Alps to join his brother
of Germany, and had addressed a circular letter to the bishops of Gaul
and Germany, asking them to order fasts and prayers for the success of
his enterprise. This did not hinder the greater number of the prelates
from rallying round Louis who was at Worms where his army was
concentrating. Only a few steadfast partisans of Lothar, such as
Agobard of Lyons, failed to obey the imperial summons. The two
parties seem to have been in no haste to come to blows, and for several
C. MED. H. VOL. III. CH. I.
2
## p. 18 (#64) ##############################################
18
The Field of Lies
months spent their time in negotiating and in drawing up statements of
the case on one side or the other, the sons persistently professing the
deepest respect for their father, and vowing that all their quarrel was
with his evil counsellors. Things remained in this state until, in the
middle of June, the Emperor resolved to go and seek his sons in order
to have a personal discussion with them.
In company, then, with his supporters, he went up the left bank of
the Rhine towards Alsace where the rebels were posted, and pitched his
camp opposite theirs near Colmar, in the plain known as the Rothfeld.
Brisk negotiations were again opened between the two parties. Pope
Gregory finally went in person to the imperial camp to confer with
Louis and his adherents. Did he exert his influence over the bishops
who up to then had seemed resolved to stand by their Emperor? Or
did the promises made by the sons work upon the magnates who still
gathered round Louis ? Whatever may be the explanation, a general
defection set in. Within a few days the Emperor found himself deserted
by all his followers and left almost alone. The place which was the
scene of this shameful betrayal is traditionally known as the Lügenfeld,
the Field of Lies. Louis was constrained to advise the few prelates who
still kept faith with him, such as Aldric of Le Mans or Moduin of
Autun, to follow the universal example. He himself, with his wife, his
illegitimate brother Drogo and young Charles, surrendered to Lothar.
The latter declared his father deposed from his authority and claimed
the Empire as his own by right. He made use of it to share dignities
and honours among his chief partisans. In order to give some show of
satisfaction to his brothers, he added to Pepin's share the wide duchy
of Maine, and to Louis's Saxony, Thuringia and Alsace. Judith was
sent under a strong guard to Tortona in Italy, and Charles the Bald to
the monastery of Prüm. After this, Pepin and Louis the German
returned to their respective states, while the Pope, perhaps disgusted
by the scenes he had just witnessed, quitted Lothar and betook himself
directly to Rome.
Louis had been temporarily immured in the monastery of St Médard
at Soissons. The assembly held by Lothar at Compiègne was not of
itself competent to decree the deposition of the old Emperor, in spite
of the accusations brought against him by Ebbo, Archbishop of Rheims.
Lothar was forced to confine himself to bringing sufficient pressure to
bear upon his father (through the agency of churchmen of the rebel
party sent to Soissons) to induce him to acknowledge himself guilty of
offences which rendered him unworthy of retaining power. But not
satisfied with his deposition the bishops forced him besides to undergo a
public humiliation. In the church of Notre-Dame at Compiègne in the
presence of the assembled magnates and bishops, Louis, prostrate upon
a hair cloth before the altar, was compelled to read the form of confession
drawn up by his enemies, in which he owned himself guilty of sacrilege,
## p. 19 (#65) ##############################################
Restoration of Louis the Pious
19
as having transgressed the commands of the Church and violated the
oaths that he had sworn; of homicide, as having caused the death of
Bernard; and of perjury, as having broken the pact instituted to preserve
the peace of the Empire and the Church. The document containing the
text of this confession was then laid upon the altar, while the Emperor,
stripped of his baldric, the emblem of the warrior (knight or miles), and
clothed in the garb of a penitent, was removed under close supervision
first to Soissons, then to the neighbourhood of Compiègne, and finally
to Aix where the new Emperor was to spend the winter.
But by the end of 833, dissension was beginning to make itself felt
among the victors. Louis's half-brothers, Hugh and Drogo, who had fled
to Louis the German, were exhorting him to come over to the party of
his father and of Judith, whose sister, Emma, he had married in 827.
Louis the German's first step was to intercede with Lothar to obtain a
mitigation of the treatment meted out to the imprisoned Emperor.
The attempt failed, and only produced a widening of the breach be-
tween the two brothers. A reaction of feeling began in favour of the
captive sovereign. The famous theologian Raban Maur, Abbot of Fulda
and later Archbishop of Mayence (847–56), published an apologia on
his behalf, in answer to a treatise in which Agobard of Lyons had
just refurbished the old calumnies which had been widely circulated
against Judith. Louis the German made overtures to Pepin, who was
no more disposed than himself to recognise any disproportionate authority
in Lothar, and before long the two kings agreed to summon their
followers to march to the help of their father. Lothar, not feeling
himself safe in Austrasia, went to Saint-Denis where he had called upon
his host to assemble. But the nobles of his party deserted him in his
turn. He was compelled to set Louis the Pious and young Charles at
liberty and to retreat upon Vienne on the Rhone, while the bishops and
magnates present at Saint-Denis decreed the restoration of Louis to his
former dignity, reinvesting him with his crown and his weapons, the
insignia of his authority. In charters and documents he now reassumes
the imperial style: Hludowicus, divina repropiciante clementia, imperator
augustus.
On leaving Saint-Denis Louis repaired to Quierzy, where he was
joined by Pepin and Louis the German. Judith, who had been with-
drawn from her prison by the magnates devoted to the Emperor, also
returned to Gaul. Meanwhile Lothar was preparing to carry on the
struggle. Lambert and Matfrid, his most zealous supporters, had raised
an army in his name on the March of Brittany, and defeated and killed
the counts sent against them by the Emperor. Lothar, who had rallied
his partisans, came to join them in the neighbourhood of Orleans.
There he awaited the arrival of the Emperor, who was still in company
with his other two sons. As on similar occasions, no battle was fought.
Lothar, realising the inadequacy of his forces, made his submission and
CH, I.
2-2
## p. 20 (#66) ##############################################
20
Submission of Lothar
4
appeared before his father promising never to offend again. He was
obliged to pledge himself also to be content, for the future, with “ the
kingdom of Italy, such as it had been granted by Charlemagne to
Pepin,” with the obligation of protecting the Holy See. Further, he
was never to cross the Alps again without his father's consent. His
partisans, Lambert and Matfrid, were permitted to follow him into his
new kingdom, forfeiting the benefices they possessed in Gaul.
Next year (835) an assembly at Thionville again solemnly annulled
the decrees of that of Compiègne, and declared Louis to be “ re-established
in the honours of his ancestors, henceforth to be regarded by all
men as their lord and emperor. ” A fresh ceremony took place at Metz,
when the imperial crown was again set upon his head. At the same
time the assembly at Thionville had decreed penalties against the bishops
who had deserted their sovereign. Ebbo of Rheims was compelled to
read publicly a formulary containing the acknowledgment of his treason
and his renunciation of his dignity. He was confined at Fulda.
Agobard of Lyons, Bernard of Vienne, and Bartholomew of Narbonne
were condemned as contumacious and declared deposed. The Emperor
attempted to take advantage of this returning prosperity to restore
some degree of order in the affairs of his kingdoms, after the fiery
trial of several years of civil war. At the assembly of Tramoyes (Ain)
in June 835 he decreed the sending of missi into the different provinces
to suppress acts of pillage. At that of Aix (beginning of 836) measures
were taken to secure the regular exercise of the power of the bishops.
A little earlier an attempt had been made to prevail on Pepin of
Aquitaine to restore the Church property which he and his followers
had usurped. But it is doubtful whether these measures produced any
great effect. On the other hand, a fresh peril became daily more
threatening, namely the incursions of the Scandinavian pirates. In 834
they had ravaged the coasts of Frisia, pillaging the sea-coasts as
they went, and penetrating at least as far as the island of Noirmoutier
on the Atlantic. Henceforth they reappear almost every year, and in
835 they defeated and slew Reginald, Count of Herbauges. In the
same year they plundered the great maritime mart of Dorestad on the
North Sea. Next year, 836, they again visited Frisia, and their king
Horic had even the insolence to demand the wergild of such of his
subjects as had been slain or captured during their piratical operations.
In 837 fresh ravages took place, and the Emperor in vain attempted to
check them by sending out missi charged with the defence of the coasts,
and especially by building ships to pursue the enemy. Horic even
claimed (838) the sovereignty of Frisia, and it was not till 839 that
hostilities were temporarily suspended by a treaty.
Nor was the internal peace of the Empire much more secure. Louis
and Judith appear to have reverted to the idea of a reconciliation with
Lothar, looking upon him as the destined protector of his young brother
## p. 21 (#67) ##############################################
Death of Pepin of Aquitaine
21
a
and godson, Charles. As early as 836 negotiations were begun with a
view to the renewal of amicable relations between the King of Italy and
his father. But sickness prevented Lothar from attending the assembly
at Worms to which he had been summoned. However, at the end of
837 at the assembly held at Aix the Emperor elaborated a new scheme
of division which added to Charles's kingdom the greater part of Belgium
with the country lying between the Meuse and the Seine as far as
Burgundy. This project was certain to alarm Louis the German, whom
we find at the opening of the next year (838) making overtures in his
turn to Lothar with whom he had an interview at Trent. This displeased
the Emperor and, at the Nimeguen assembly, June 838, he punished
Louis by depriving him of part of his territory, leaving him only
Bavaria. On the other hand, in the month of September young Charles
at the age of fifteen had just attained his majority; such was the
law of the Ripuarian Franks followed by the Carolingian family. He
therefore received the baldric of a knight, and was given at Quierzy a
portion of the lands between Loire and Seine. An attempt made by
Louis to regain possession of the lands on the right bank of the Rhine
met with no success. The Emperor in his turn crossed the river and
forced his son to take refuge in Bavaria while he himself after a demon-
stration in Alemannia returned to Worms, where Lothar came from
Pavia to see him and went through a solemn ceremony of reconciliation
with him.
The death of Pepin of Aquitaine (13 December 838) seemed to simplify
the question of division and succession, for the new partition scheme
drawn up at Worms utterly ignored his son, Pepin II. Apart from
Bavaria, which with a few neighbouring pagi was left to Louis the
German, the empire of Charlemagne was cut into two parts. The
dividing line running from north to south followed the Meuse, touched
the Moselle at Toul, crossed Burgundy, and having on the west
Langres, Châlon, Lyons, Geneva, followed the line of the Alps and ended
at the Mediterranean. Lothar, as eldest son, was given the right to
choose, and took for himself the eastern portion; the other fell to Charles,
After his father's death, Lothar was also to bear the title of Emperor,
but apparently without the prerogatives attached to it by the settlement
of 817. It was to be his duty to protect Charles, while the latter was
bound to pay all due honour to his elder brother and godfather. These
obligations once fulfilled, each prince was to be absolute master in his
own kingdom.
Aquitaine was thus in theory vested in Charles the Bald, but several
guerilla bands still held the field in the name of Pepin II. The
Emperor went thither in person to secure the recognition of his son.
Setting out for Châlon where the host had been summoned to meet
(1 September 839) he made his way to Clermont. Here a party of
Aquitanian lords came to make their submission to their new sovereign.
CH. I.
## p. 22 (#68) ##############################################
22
Death of Louis the Pious
This did not, however, imply that the country was pacified, for many of
the counts still maintained their resistance.
But Louis the Pious had now to renew the struggle with the King of
Germany, who as well as Pepin was injured by the partition of 839, and
had invaded Saxony and Thuringia. The Emperor advanced against
him and had no great difficulty in thrusting him back into Bavaria.
But as he was returning to Worms, where his son Lothar, who had gone
back to Italy after the late partition, had been appointed to meet him,
the cough which had long tormented him became worse. Having fallen
dangerously ill at Salz, he had himself moved to an island in the Rhine
opposite the palace of Ingelheim. Here he breathed his last in his tent
on 20 June 840 in the arms of his half-brother, Drogo, sending his
pardon to his son Louis. Before his death he had proclaimed Lothar
Emperor, commending Judith and Charles to his protection and ordering
that the insignia of the imperial authority, the sceptre, crown and sword,
should be sent to him.
The dying Emperor might well have despaired of unity for Charle-
magne's Empire and have foreseen that the civil wars of the last twenty
years would be renewed more fiercely than ever among his sons. As the
outcome of his reign was unfortunate, and as under him the first mani.
festations appeared of the two scourges which were about to destroy the
Frank Empire, the insubordination of the great lords on one side and
the Norman invasions on the other, historians have been too easily led
to accuse Louis the Pious of weakness and incapacity. He was long
known by the somewhat contemptuous epithet of the Debonnaire (the
good-natured, the easy-going). But in truth his life-story shews him to
have been capable of perseverance and at times even of energy and re-
solution, although as a rule the energy was of no long duration. Louis
the Pious found himself confronted by opponents, who took his clemency
for a sign of weakness, and knew how to exploit his humility for
their own profit by making him appear an object of contempt. But
above all, circumstances were adverse to him. He was the loser in the
long struggle with his sons and with the magnates ; this final ill-success
rather than his own character explains the severe judgment so often
passed upon the son of the great Charles.
## p. 23 (#69) ##############################################
23
CHAPTER II.
THE CAROLINGIAN KINGDOMS (840-877).
The death of Louis the Pious and his clearly expressed last wishes
secured the imperial dignity to Lothar. But the situation had not been
defined with any precision. The last partition, decreed in 839, had made
important alterations in the shares assigned to the three brothers. Now
what Lothar hastened to claim was “the empire such as it had formerly
been entrusted to him," namely, the territorial power and the pre-eminent
position secured to him by the Constitutio of 817, with his two brothers
reduced to the position of vassal kinglets. To make good these claims
Lothar had the support of the majority of the prelates, always faithful,
in the main, to the principle of unity. But the great lay lords were
guided only by considerations of self-interest. In a general way, each of
the three brothers had on his side those who had already lived under his
rule, and whom he had succeeded in winning over by grants of honours
and benefices. Louis had thus secured the Germans, Bavarians, Thu-
ringians and Saxons, and Charles the Neustrians, Burgundians, and
such of the Aquitanians as had not espoused the cause of Pepin II.
But it would be a mistake to see in the wars which followed the death
of Louis the Pious a struggle between races. As a contemporary
writes, “the combatants did not differ either in their weapons, their
,
customs, or their race. They fought one another because they belonged
to opposite camps, and these camps stood for nothing but coalitions of
personal interests.
Lothar received the news of his father's death as he was on his
way to Worms. He betook himself to Strasbourg, and in that town
the oath of fealty was sworn to him by many of the magnates of ancient
Francia who were still loyal to the Carolingian family and to the
system of a united empire, being vaguely aware that this system would
secure the predominance of the Austrasians from among whom Charles
and Louis the Pious had drawn almost all the counts of their vast
empire. But Louis the German, on his part, had occupied the country
as far as the Rhine, and Charles the Bald was also making ready for the
struggle. Lothar had not resolution enough to attack his two brothers
one after the other and force them to accept the re-establishment of the
Constitutio of 817. He first had an interview beyond the Rhine with
CH. II.
## p. 24 (#70) ##############################################
24
Battle of Fontenoy
1
a
Louis, concluding a truce with him until a forthcoming assembly should
meet, at which the conditions of a permanent peace were to be discussed.
Then he marched against Charles, many of the magnates of the district
between the Seine and the Loire joining him, among others Gerard,
Count of Paris, and Hilduin, Abbot of Saint-Denis. But Charles, being
skilfully advised by Judith and other counsellors, among them an
illegitimate grandson of Charles the Great, the historian Nithard,
opened negotiations and succeeded in obtaining terms which left him
provisionally in possession of Aquitaine, Septimania, Provence and six
counties between the Loire and the Seine. Lothar, besides, arranged
to meet him at the palace of Attigny in the ensuing May, whither
Louis the German was also summoned to arrange for a definitive peace.
.
The winter of 840–841 was spent by the three brothers in enlisting
partisans and in gathering troops. But when spring came, Lothar
neglected to go to Attigny. Only Louis and Charles met there. An
alliance between these two, both equally threatened by the claims of
their elder brother, was inevitable. Their armies made a junction in
the district of Châlons-sur-Marne, while that of Lothar mustered in the
Auxerrois. Louis and Charles marched together against the Emperor,
proposing terms of agreement as they came, and sending embassy after
embassy to exhort him “to restore peace to the Church of God. ”
Lothar was anxious to spin matters out, for he was expecting the
arrival of Pepin II (who had declared for him) and of his contingent
of Aquitanians, or at least of southern Aquitanians, for those of the
centre and north were induced by Judith to join Charles the Bald.
On 24 June, Pepin effected his junction with the Emperor. The latter
now thought himself strong enough to wish for a battle. He sent a
haughty message to his younger brothers, reminding them that “the
imperial dignity had been committed to him, and that he would know
how to fulfil the duties it laid upon him. ” On the morning of the 25th,
the fight began at Fontenoy in Puisaye, and a desperate struggle it
proved. The centre of the imperial army, where Lothar appeared in
person, stood firm at first against the troops of Louis the German. On
the left wing the Aquitanians of Pepin II long held out, but Charles
the Bald, reinforced by a body of Burgundians who had come up,
under the command of Warin, Count of Mâcon, was victorious against
the right wing, and his success involved the defeat of Lothar's army.
The number of the dead was very great; a chronicler puts it at 40,000.
These figures are exaggerated, but it is plain that the imagination of
contemporaries was vividly impressed by the carnage “ wrought on that
accursed day, which ought no longer to be counted in the
1 Much discussion has arisen over the identification of the place which Nithard
calls Fontanetum. The various contentions are summed up in Charles le Chauve
(Lot and Halphen), p. 29, no. 6. It is nearly certain that the Fontenoy in question
is that situated in dép. Yonne, arr. Auxerre, cant. Saint-Sauveur.
year, which
## p. 25 (#71) ##############################################
Oath of Strasbourg
25
should be banished from the memory of men, and be for ever deprived
the light of the sun and of the beams of morning,” as the poet
Angilbert says, adding that “the garments of the slain Frankish
warriors whitened the plain as the birds usually do in autumn. ” At
the end of the ninth century, the Lotharingian chronicler, Regino of
Prüm, echoes the tradition according to which the battle of Fontenoy
decimated the Frankish nobility and left the Empire defenceless against
the ravages of the Northmen.
In reality, the battle had not been decisive. Louis and Charles
might see the Divine judgment in the issue of the fight, and cause the
bishops of their faction to declare that the Almighty had given sentence
in their favour, yet, as the annalist of Lobbes put it, “great carnage
had taken place, but neither of the two adversaries had triumphed. ”
Lothar, who was stationed at Aix-la-Chapelle, was ready to carry on the
struggle, and was seeking fresh partisans, even making appeal to the
Danish pirates whom he settled in the island of Walcheren, while at
the same time he was sending emissaries into Saxony, to stir up in-
surrections among the free or semi-free populations there (the frilingi
and lazzi) against the nobility who were of Frankish origin. His two
brothers having again separated, he attempted to re-open the struggle
by marching in the first instance against Louis. He occupied Mayence,
and awaited the attack of the Saxon army. But on learning that
Charles, on his side, had collected troops and was marching upon Aix,
Lothar quitted Mayence and fell back upon Worms. Then, in his
turn, he took the offensive against his youngest brother and compelled
him to give back as far as the banks of the Seine. But Charles took
up a strong position in the neighbourhood of Paris and Saint-Denis.
Lothar dared not bring on a battle, so he fell back slowly upon Aix,
which he had regained by the beginning of February, 842.
Meanwhile his two brothers drew their alliance closer, and Charles,
with this object, had made an appeal to Louis. The latter went to
Strasbourg, and there on 14 February, the two kings, surrounded by
their men, had a memorable interview. After having addressed their
,
followers gathered together in the palace of Strasbourg, and recalled to
them the crimes of Lothar, who had not consented to recognise the
judgment of God after his defeat at Fontenoy, but had persisted in
causing confusion in the Christian world, they swore mutual friendship
and loyal assistance to one another. Louis, as the elder, was the first
to take the following oath in the Romance tongue, so as to be under-
stood by his brother's subjects: “For the love of God and for the
Christian people, and our common salvation, so far as God gives me
knowledge and power, I will defend my brother Charles with my aid
and in everything, as one's duty is in right to defend one's brother,
on condition that he shall do as much for me, and I will make no
agreement with my brother Lothar which shall, with my consent, be
1
CH. II.
## p. 26 (#72) ##############################################
26
Treaty of Verdun
M
to the prejudice of my brother Charles. ” Thereupon Charles repeated
the same formula in the Teutonic tongue used by his brother's subjects.
Finally, the two armies made the following declaration each in their
own language. “If Louis (or Charles) observes the oath which he has
sworn to his brother Charles (or Louis) and if Charles (or Louis) my
lord, for his part, infringe his oath, if I am not able to dissuade him
from it, neither I nor anyone whom I can hinder shall lend him support
against Louis (or Charles). ” The two brothers then spent several days
together at Strasbourg, prodigal of outward tokens of their amity,
offering each other feasts and warlike sports, sleeping at night under
each other's roofs, spending their days together and settling their
business in common. In the month of March they advanced against
Lothar, and by way of Worms and Mayence reached Coblence, where
the Emperor had collected his troops. His army, panic-stricken, dis-
banded without even attempting to defend the passage of the Moselle.
Louis and Charles entered Aix, which Lothar abandoned, to make his
way to Lyons through Burgundy. His two brothers followed him.
Having reached Châlon-sur-Saône they received envoys from the
Emperor acknowledging his offences against them, and proposing peace
on condition that they granted him a third of the Empire, with some
territorial addition on account of the imperial title which their father
had bestowed on him, and of the imperial dignity which their grand-
father had joined to the kingship of the Franks. Lothar was still
surrounded by numerous supporters. On the other hand, the magnates,
fatigued by years of war, were anxious for peace. Louis and Charles
accepted in principle the proposals of their elder brother.
On 15 June an interview took place between the three sovereigns,
on an island in the Saône near Mâcon, which led to the conclusion of
a truce. Louis made use of it to crush the insurrection of a league
of Saxon peasants, the Stellinga, which the Emperor had secretly
encouraged. In the month of November the truce was renewed, and
a commission of a hundred and twenty members having met at Coblence,
charged with the duty of arranging the partition of the kingdoms
among the three brothers, the division was definitively concluded at
Verdun, in the month of August 843. The official document has been
lost, but it is nevertheless possible, from the information given by
the chroniclers, to state its main provisions. The Empire was divided
from East to West into three sections, and “Lothar received the middle
kingdom,” i. e. Italy and the region lying between the Alps, the Aar
and the Rhine on the East (together with the Ripuarian counties
on the lower right bank of the latter river) and the Rhone, the Saône
and the Scheldt on the West. These made up a strip of territory
about a thousand miles in length by one hundred and thirty in breadth,
reaching from the North Sea to the Duchy of Benevento. Louis re-
ceived the countries beyond the Rhine, except Frisia which was left to
## p. 27 (#73) ##############################################
Treaty of Verdun: its importance
27
Lothar, while west of that river, “because of the abundance of wine”
and in order that he should have his share of what was originally
Austrasia, he was given in addition the dioceses of Spires, Worms and
Mayence. Charles kept the rest as far as Spain, nothing being said
as to Pepin II, whose rights the Emperor found himself unable to
enforce. This division at first sight appears fairly simple, but in
reality the frontiers it assigned to Lothar's kingdom were largely
artificial, since the border-line by no means followed the course of the
rivers, but cutting off from the Emperor's share three counties on the
left bank of the Rhine, allowed him in compensation on the left bank
of the Meuse the districts of Mézières and Mouzon, the Dormois, the
Verdunois, the Barrois, the Ornois with Bassigny, and on the right
bank of the Rhone, the Vivarais and the Uzège with, of course, the
whole of the transrhodanian parts of the counties of Vienne and Lyons.
Each of the three brothers swore to secure to the other two the share
thus adjudged to them, and to maintain concord, and “peace having
been thus made and confirmed by oath, each one returned to his
kingdom to govern and defend it. ”
The Treaty of Verdun marks a first stage in the dissolution of the
Carolingian Empire. Doubtless it would be idle to see in it an uprising
of ancient national feelings against the unity which had been imposed
by the strong hand of Charlemagne. In reality, these old nationalities
had no more existence on the morrow of the treaty than on the eve of
it. It is true that the three ancient kingdoms of Lombardy, Bavaria
and Aquitaine formed nuclei of the states set up in 843. But Lothar's
portion included races as different as those dwelling round the Lower
Rhine and those of central Italy. Louis, besides Germans, had Slav
subjects, and even some Franks who spoke the Romance tongue. Charles
became the ruler of the greater part of the Franks of Francia, the
country between the Rhine and the Loire which was to give its name
to his kingdom, but his Breton and Aquitanian vassals had nothing to
connect them closely with the Neustrians or the Burgundians. The
partition of 843 was the logical outcome of the mistakes of Louis the
Pious who, for the sake of Charles, his Benjamin, had sacrificed in
his interests that unity of the Empire which it had been the object
of the Constitutio of 817 to safeguard, while at the same time it gave
the younger sons of Louis the position of kings. None the less, the
date 843 is a convenient one in history to mark a dividing line, to
register the beginning of the individual life of modern nations. Louis
had received the greater part of the lands in which the Teutonic
language was spoken; Charles reigned almost exclusively (setting aside
the Bretons) over populations of the Romance tongue. This difference
only became more accentuated as time went on. On the other hand,
the frequent changes of sovereignty in Lorraine have permanently made
of ancient Austrasia a debateable territory. The consequences of the
CH. II.
## p. 28 (#74) ##############################################
28
The Empire breaking up
own
treaty of Verdun have made themselves felt even down to our
day, since from 843 to 1920 France and Germany have contended for
portions of media Francia, the ancient home whence the companions of
Charles and Pepin went forth to conquer Gallia and Germania. But
in 843 France and Germany do not yet exist. Each sovereign looks
upon himself as a King of the Franks. None the less, there is a
Frankish kingdom of the West and a Frankish kingdom of the East,
the destinies of which will henceforth lie apart, and from this point
of view it is true to say that the grandsons of Charles, the universal
Emperor, have each his country.
Even contemporary writers realised the importance of the division
made by the Treaty of Verdun in the history of the Frankish monarchy.
The following justly famous verses by the deacon Florus of Lyons sum
up the situation as it appeared to the advocates of the ancien régime of
imperial unity:
Floruit egregium claro diademate regnum:
Princeps unus erat, populus quoque subditus unus,
At nunc tantus apex tanto de culmine lapsus,
Cunctorum teritur pedibus ; diademate nudus
Perdidit imperii pariter nomenque decusque,
Et regnum unitum concidit sorte triformi.
Induperator ibi prorsus jam nemo putatur ;
Pro rege est regulus, pro regno fragmina regnil.
For the old conception of a united Empire in which kings acted
merely as lieutenants of the Emperor, was being substituted the idea
of a new form of government, that of three kings, equal in dignity and
in effective power. Lothar, it is true, retained the imperial title, but
had been unable to secure, by obtaining a larger extent of territory,
any real superiority over his brothers. He possessed, indeed, the two
capitals of the Empire, Rome and Aix, but this circumstance did not,
in the ninth century, carry all the weight in men's minds that has since
been attributed to it. Besides this advantage in dignity was largely
counterbalanced by the inferiority arising from the weakness of geo-
graphical position which marked Lothar's long strip of territory, peopled
by varying races with varying interests, threatened on the north by the
Danes, and on the south by the Saracens, over the whole of which
it was barely possible that he could exercise his direct authority. As
to the Emperor's brothers, they were naturally disinclined to recognise
in him any superiority over them. In their negotiations with him they
regard themselves as his equals (peers, pares). Beyond his title of king
they give him no designation save that of “elder brother” and the very
word imperium rarely occurs in documents.
3
1
Querela de divisione imperii in M. H. G. , Poet. Lat. , Vol. 11. p. 559 et sqq.
)
## p. 29 (#75) ##############################################
Part played by the Emperor
29
Yet to say that the Empire has completely disappeared would be an
exaggeration. One of the chief prerogatives of the Emperor is still
maintained. It was his function not merely to safeguard the unity of
the Frankish monarchy, but his duty was also to protect the Church and
the Holy See, that is, to take care that religious peace was preserved,
at all events, throughout Western Christendom, and, in concert with
the Pope, to govern Rome and the Papal States. As Lothar had been
entrusted with these duties during his father's lifetime, he would be more
familiar with them than any other person. “The Pope," he said himself,
"put the sword into my hand to defend the altar and the throne,” and the
very first measure of his administration had been the Roman Constitution
of 824 which defined the relations of the two powers. These imperial
rights and duties had not been made to vanish by the new situation
created in other respects for the Emperor in 843. If Lothar does not
seem to have given any large share of his attention to ecclesiastical affairs,
on the other hand he is found intervening, either personally or through
his son Louis, in papal elections. In 844 Sergius II, who had been
consecrated without the Emperor's participation, met with bitter re-
proaches for having thus neglected to observe the constitution of 824.
On his death (847) the people of Rome, alarmed at the risk involved in
& vacancy of the Holy See while Saracen invasions were threatening,
again ignored the imperial regulations at the election of Leo IV. But
the latter hastened to write to Lothar and Louis II to make excuses for
the irregular course taken by the Romans. In 855 the election of
Benedict III took place, all forms being duly observed, and was respect-
fully notified to the two Augusti through the medium of their missi.
The measures taken by Lothar against the Saracens of Italy were dictated
as much by the necessity of defending his own states as by a sense of his
position as Protector of the Holy See, but there were one or two
occasions on which he appears to have attempted to exercise some
authority on matters ecclesiastical in the dominions of his brother
Charles.
It is at least highly probable that it was at his request that Sergius II,
in 844, granted to Drogo Bishop of Metz, who had already under colour
of his personal claims been invested with archiepiscopal dignity, the office
of Vicar Apostolic throughout the Empire north of the Alps, with the
right of convoking General Councils, and of summoning all ecclesiastical
causes before his tribunal, previous to any appeal being made to Rome.
This, from the spiritual point of view, was to give control to the
Emperor, through the medium of one of his prelates, over ecclesiastical
affairs in the kingdoms of his two brothers. But as early as the month
of December 844, a synod of the bishops of the Western Kingdom at Ver
(near Compiègne) declared, with abundance of personally complimentary
expressions towards Drogo, that his primatial authority must be first of
all recognised by a general assembly of the bishops concerned. Such an
CA. II.
## p. 30 (#76) ##############################################
30
“The system of concord”
assembly, as may be imagined, never came together, and the Archbishop
of Metz was forced to resign himself to a purely honorary vicariate.
Lothar met with no better success in his attempt to restore his ally,
Ebbo, to his archiepiscopal throne at Rheims, whence he had been ex-
pelled in 835 as a traitor to the Emperor Louis, though no successor had
yet been appointed. The Pope turned a deaf ear to all representations
on Ebbo's behalf, and the Council at Ver entreated Charles to provide
the Church of Rheims with a pastor without delay. This pastor proved
to be the celebrated Hincmar? who for nearly forty years was to be the
most strenuous and illustrious representative of the episcopate of Gaul.
Thus the attempts made by Lothar to obtain anything in the nature
of supremacy outside the borders of his own kingdom had met with no
success. They even had a tendency to bring about a renewal of hostilities
.
between him and his youngest brother. But the bishops surrounding
the three kings had a clear conception of the Treaty of Verdun as having
been made not only to settle the territorial problem, but also to secure
the continuance of peace and order. The magnates themselves were
weary of civil war, and had, besides, enemies from without to contend
against, Slavs, Saracens, Bretons and, above all, Northmen. They were of
one mind with the prelates in saying to the three brothers “ You must
abstain from secret machinations to one another's hurt, and you must
support and aid one another. ” Consequently a new system was established
called with perfect correctness“ the system of concord,” of concord secured
by frequent meetings between the three brothers.
The first of these interviews took place at Yütz, near Thionville, in
October 844, at the same time as a synod of the bishops of the three
kingdoms under the presidency of Drogo. Here the principles governing
.
the “ Carolingian fraternity ” were at once laid down. The kings, for
the future, are not to seek to injure one another, but on the contrary,
are to lend one another mutual aid and assistance against enemies from
outside.
The king most threatened at the time by enemies such as these was
Charles the Bald. In 842 the Northmen had pillaged the great com-
mercial mart of Quentovic near the river Canche. In the following
year they went up the Loire as far as Nantes which they plundered,
slaughtering the bishop during the celebration of divine service. The
Bretons, united under their leader Nomenoë, and not mueh impressed
by an expedition sent against them in 843, were invading Frankish
| Hincmar, who was born during the first years of the ninth century, was at this
time a monk at Saint-Denis and entrusted with the government of the Abbeys of
Notre-Dame by Compiègne and Saint-Germer de Flay. But Charles had already
employed him on various missions, and he seems for some years to have held an
important position among the king's counsellors.
2 Chapter XIII deals with the Vikings. They are therefore mentioned here
only so far as is necessary to an understanding of the general history of the Frankish
kingdoms.
## p. 31 (#77) ##############################################
Conflicts and invasions
31
territory. Lambert, one of the Counts of the March, created to keep them
in check, had risen in revolt and was making common cause with them.
On the other hand, the Aquitanians, faithful to Pepin II, the king they
had chosen, refused to recognise Charles. An expedition which the king
had sent against them in the spring of 844 had failed through a check
to the siege of Toulouse, and through the execution of Charles's former
protector, Count Bernard of Septimania, who was accused of treason.
The Frankish troops, beaten by the Aquitanians on the banks of the
river Agoût, had been forced to beat a retreat without accomplishing
any useful purpose. The kings, who had met at Yütz, addressed a joint
letter to Nomenoë, Lambert and Pepin II, threatening to unite and
march against them if they persisted in their rebellion. These threats,
however, were only partially effective. Pepin agreed to do homage to
Charles, who in exchange for this profession of obedience recognised his
possession of a restricted Aquitaine, without Poitou, the Angoumois or
Saintonge. But the Bretons, for their part, refused to submit. Charles
sent against them an expedition which ended in a lamentable defeat on
the plain of Ballon, not far from Redon (22 November 845).
During the following summer Charles was compelled to sign a treaty
with Nomenoë acknowledging the independence of Brittany, and to leave
the rebel Lambert in possession of the county of Maine. A body of
Scandinavian pirates went up the Seine in 845; the king was obliged to
buy their withdrawal with a sum of money. Other Danes, led by their
king, Horic, were ravaging the dominions of Louis the German, particu-
larly Saxony. In 845 their countrymen had got possession of Hamburg
and destroyed it. At the same time Louis had to keep back his Slav
neighbours, and to send expeditions against the rebellious Obotrites
(814) and the Moravians (846). Lothar, for his part, had in 845 to
contend with a revolt of his Provençal subjects led by Fulcrad, Count of
Arles. The friendly agreement proclaimed at Yütz between the three.
brothers was a necessity of the situation. It was nevertheless disturbed
by the action of a vassal of Charles the Bald, named Gilbert (Giselbert),
who carried off a daughter of Lothar I, taking her with him to Aquitaine
where he married her (846). Great was the Emperor's wrath against his
youngest brother, whom he accused, in spite of all his protests, of com-
plicity with the abductor. He renewed his intrigues at Rome on behalf
of Drogo and Ebbo, and even gave shelter in his dominions to Charles,
brother of Pepin, who had again rebelled. Besides this he allowed
certain of his adherents to lead expeditions into the Western Kingdom
which were, in fact, mere plundering raids. He consented, however, in
the beginning of 847 to meet Louis and Charles in a fresh conference
which took place at Meersen near Maestricht.
Again the principle of fraternity was proclaimed, and this time it was
extended beyond the sovereigns themselves to their subjects. Further,
for the first time a provision was made which chiefly interested Lothar,
CH. II.
## p. 32 (#78) ##############################################
32
Weakness of the concord
It was
a
>
who was already concerned about the succession to his crown.
decided to guarantee to the children of any one of the three brothers
who might happen to die, the peaceful possession of their father's
kingdom. Letters or ambassadors were also ordered to be sent to the
Northmen, the Bretons and the Aquitanians. But this latter resolu-
tion, save for an advance made to King Horic, remained nearly a dead
letter. Lothar, who still cherished anger against Gilbert's suzerain,
chose to leave him in the midst of the difficulties which pressed upon
him, and even sought an alliance against him with Louis the German,
his interviews with whom become very frequent during the next few
years.
Nevertheless the position of Charles improved. The magnates of
Aquitaine, ever inconstant, had abandoned Pepin II, almost to a
man, and Charles had, as it were,
,
set a seal
upon
his entrance
into actual possession of the whole of the states which the treaty of
843 had recognised as his, by having himself solemnly crowned and
anointed at Orleans on 6 June 848 by Ganelon (Wenilo), the Arch-
bishop of Sens. Again, Gilbert had left Aquitaine and taken refuge
at the court of Louis the German. There was no longer any obstacle to
the reconciliation of Lothar with his youngest brother, which took place
in a very cordial interview between the two sovereigns at Péronne
(January 849). A little later, Louis the German, in his turn, had a
meeting with Charles, at which the two kings mutually “ recommended”
their kingdoms and the guardianship of their children to one another,
in case of the death of either. The result of all these private interviews
was a general conference held at Meersen in the spring of 851 in order
to buttress the somewhat shaky edifice of the concordia fratrum. The
principles of brotherly amity and the duty of mutual help were again
proclaimed, supplemented by a pledge given by the three brothers to
forget their resentment for the past, and, in order to avoid any further
occasions of discord, to refuse entrance into any one kingdom to such as
had disturbed the peace of any other.
