Next
year another fleet desisted from pillaging Frisia to sail up the Seine.
year another fleet desisted from pillaging Frisia to sail up the Seine.
Cambridge Medieval History - v3 - Germany and the Western Empire
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.
But these fair professions did little to alter the actual state of things,
and the sovereigns pursued their intrigues against one another. Lothar
tried to recommend himself to Charles by procuring for Hincmar the
grant of the pallium. Louis the German, on the contrary, displayed his
enmity to him by receiving into his dominions the disgraced Archbishop
Ebbo, to whom he even gave the bishopric of Hildesheim. Meanwhile
the Scandinavian invasions raged ever more fiercely in the Western
Kingdom. In 851 the Danish followers of the sea-king Oscar, having
devastated Aquitaine, pushed up the Seine as far as Rouen, pillaged
Jumièges and Saint-Wandrille, and from thence made their way into
the Beauvais country which they ravaged with fire and sword.
Next
year another fleet desisted from pillaging Frisia to sail up the Seine.
Other hordes ascended the Loire, and in 853 burned Tours and its
## p. 33 (#79) ##############################################
Brittany and Aquitaine
33
collegiate church of St Martin, one of the most venerated sanctuaries of
Gaul. Some of the Northmen, quitting the river-banks, carried fire and
sword through the country to Angers and Poitiers. Next year Blois and
Orleans were ravaged, and a body of Danes wintered at the island of
Besse near Nantes, where they fortified themselves. On the other hand,
in 849, Nomenoë of Brittany, who was striving ever harder to make good
his position as an independent sovereign, and had just made an attempt
to set up a new ecclesiastical organisation in Brittany, withdrawing it
from the jurisdiction of the Frankish metropolitan at Tours', was again
in arms. He seized upon Rennes, and ravaged the country as far as
Le Mans. Death put an abrupt end to his successes (7 March 851), but
his son and successor, Erispoë, obtained from Charles, who had been dis-
couraged by a fruitless expedition, his recognition as king of Brittany,
now enlarged by the districts of Nantes, Retz and Rennes.
Finally, the affairs of Aquitaine only just failed to rekindle war
between the Eastern and Western kings. The authority of Charles, in
spite of Pepin's oath of fealty, and in spite of the apparent submission
of the magnates in 848, had never been placed, to the south of the Loire,
on really solid foundations. In 849 he had been obliged to despatch a
fresh expedition into Aquitaine, which had failed in taking Toulouse.
But afterwards in 852 the chance of a skirmish threw Pepin into the
hands of Sancho, Count of Gascony, who handed him over to Charles the
Bald. The king at once had the captive tonsured and interned in a
monastery. But this did little to secure the submission of Aquitaine.
The very next year the magnates of the country sent envoys to Louis
the German offering him the crown, either for himself or one of his
sons, and threatening, if he refused it, to have recourse to the heathen,
either Saracen or Northman. Louis the German agreed to send one of his
sons, Louis the Younger, whom they might put at their head. But
Charles the Bald had become aware of what was intended against him,
for he is at once found making closer alliance with Lothar, whom he met
twice, first at Valenciennes and then at Liège. In the course of the
interviews the two sovereigns guaranteed to each other the peaceful
possession of their lands for themselves and their heirs. When they
separated, Aquitaine was in full revolt. Charles hastened to collect his
1 The question of the Breton schism has given rise within the last few years to
keen discussion between M. M. R. Merlet (La Chronique de Nantes, Paris, 1896,
8vo, p. xxxix et sqq. ); R. de la Borderie (Histoire de la Bretagne, tome 11. p. 480
et sqq. ); Mgr. Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, tome 11. p. 256 et sqq. );
L Levillain (‘Les réformes ecclésiastiques de Nomenoë' in the Moyen Age, 1901, p. 201
et sqq. ) and F. Lot ('Le schisme breton du ixe siècle'in Mélanges d'histoire
bretonne, Paris, 1907, 8vo, p. 58 et sqq. ) especially with regard to the value of the
original narratives dealing with these facts. It seems certain that the Breton prince
set up a metropolitanate of Dol. But it is more doubtful whether he created bishoprics
at Tréguier and Saint-Brieuc, which continued as before to be abbeys the Abbots
of which held the rank of Bishops.
3
C. BIED, H. VOL. III. CH. II.
## p. 34 (#80) ##############################################
34
Death of the Emperor Lothar
army, cross the Loire and march against the rebels, ravaging the
country as he went, devastated as it already was by the troops which
Louis the Younger had brought from beyond the Rhine. The news of a
colloquy between Lothar and his brother of Germany excited the distrust
of Charles the Bald, and abruptly recalled him to the north of Gaul, where
he came to Attigny to renew the alliance previously made with the
Emperor. Then, with his army he again set out for Aquitaine. But
what was of more service to him than these warlike demonstrations was the
re-appearance, south of the Loire, of Pepin II, who had escaped from his
prison. At the sight of their old prince, the Aquitanians very generally
abandoned the cause of Louis the Younger, who found himself forced to
return to Bavaria. But it does not appear that Charles the Bald looked
upon Pepin's power as very firmly established, for next year he gave a king
to the Aquitanians in the person of his own son Charles (the Younger)
whom he caused to be solemnly anointed at Limoges.
A few weeks earlier, Lothar, after having arranged for the division
of his lands among the three sons whom the Empress Ermengarde had
borne him, retired to the Abbey of Prüm. Here it was that on the
night of 28–29 September 855, his restless life reached its end.
The partition which the Emperor Lothar I had thus made of his
territories divided into three truncated portions the long strip of country
which by the treaty of 843 had fallen to him as the lot of the eldest
son of Louis the Pious. To Louis II, the eldest of the dead man's sons,
was given the imperial title, which he had borne since April 850, to-
gether with Italy. To the next, Lothar II, were bequeathed the districts
from Frisia to the Alps and between the Rhine and the Scheldt which
were to preserve his own name, for they were called Lotharii regnum,
i. e. Lorraine. For the youngest son, Charles, a new kingdom was
formed by the union of Provence proper with the duchy of Lyons
(i. e. the Lyonnais and the Viennois). For the rest, the two elder were
discontented with their share, and in an interview which they had with
their younger brother at Orbe attempted to force him into retirement
in order to take possession of his kingdom. Only the intervention of
the Provençal magnates saved the young prince Charles, and Lothar II
and Louis II were forced to carry out the last directions of their
father. But the death of Lothar I, whose position both in theory and
in fact had fitted him to act as in some sort a mediator between his
two brothers, endangered the maintenance of peace and concord.
Charles, who was a feeble epileptic, had no weight in the “ Carolingian
concert. ” It was only the kind of regency entrusted to Gerard, Count
of Vienne, renowned in legendary epic as Girard of Roussillon, which
secured the continued existence of the little kingdom of Provence.
Louis II, whose attention was concentrated on the struggle with the
Saracens, had to content himself with the part of “ Emperor of the
Italians," as the Frank annalists, not without a touch of contempt,
9
## p. 35 (#81) ##############################################
Growing disorder in the Western Kingdom
35
describe him. Only Lothar II, as ruler of the country where the Frank
empire had been founded, and whence its aristocracy had largely sprung,
might, in virtue of his comparative strength and the geographical
situation of his kingdom, count for something in the relations between
his two uncles. Thus at the very beginning of his reign we find Louis
the German seeking to come into closer touch with him at an interview
at Coblence (February 857). Lothar, however, remained constant to the
alliance made by his father with Charles the Bald, which he solemnly
renewed at Saint-Quentin.
The Western Kingdom was still in a distracted state. The treaty
concluded at Louviers with King Erispoë (10 February 856) had for a
time secured peace with the Bretons. Prince Louis, who was about to
become Erispoë's son-in-law, was to be entrusted with the government
of the march created on the Breton frontier, and known as the Duchy of
Maine. But the Northmen were becoming ever more menacing. In the
same year, 856, in the month of August, the Viking Sidroc made his
way
up the Seine and established himself at Pitres. A few weeks later he
was joined by another Danish chief, Björn Ironside, and together they
ravaged the country from the Seine to the Loire. In vain Charles,
despite the systematic opposition of a party among the magnates who
refused to join the host, shewed laudable energy in resisting their
advance, and even succeeded in inflicting a check upon them. In the
end, they established themselves at Oscellum, an island in the Seine
opposite Jeufosse, near Mantes, twice ascending the river as far as Paris,
which they plundered, taking prisoner and holding to ransom Louis,
Abbot of Saint-Denis, one of the chief personages of the kingdom. On
the other hand, Maine, in spite of the presence of Prince Louis, remained
a hotbed of disaffection to Charles. The whole family of the Count
Gauzbert, who had been beheaded for treason some few years before, was
in rebellion, supported by the magnates of Aquitaine, where Pepin II
had again taken up arms and was carrying on a successful struggle
with Charles the Young. Even outside Aquitaine discontent was rife.
Family rivalry intensified every difficulty. The clan then most in favour
with Charles was that of the Welfs, who were related to the Empress
Judith, the most prominent members of it being her brother Conrad,
lay Abbot of Jumièges and of St Riquier, who was one of the most
influential of the king's counsellors, and his nephews Conrad, Count
of Auxerre, and Hugh, Abbot of St Germain in the same town. The
relations of Queen Ermentrude, who were thrust somewhat on one side,
Adalard, Odo, Count of Troyes, and Robert the Strong, the successor in
Maine of young Louis whom the magnates had driven out, attracted
the discontented round them.
Charles had reason to be uneasy. Already in 853, the Aquitanians
had appealed to the king of Germany. In 856 the disloyal among the
magnates had again asked help of him, and only the necessity of
CH. II.
3-2
## p. 36 (#82) ##############################################
36
Fraternal quarrels
preparing for a war with the Slavs had prevented him from complying
with their request. Charles the Bald attempted to provide against such
contingencies. At Verberie near Senlis (856), at Quierzy near Laon (857
and 858), at Brienne (858), he demanded of his magnates that they
should renew their oath of fealty. In 858 he thought he could
sufficiently depend on them to venture on a new expedition against
the Northmen, who had fortified themselves in the island of Oscellum.
Charles the Younger and Pepin II of Aquitaine had promised their
help. Lothar II himself came with a Lotharingian contingent to take a
share in the campaign (summer of 858). This was the moment which
Adalard and Odo chose for addressing a fresh appeal to Louis the
German. The latter, who was on the point of marching anew against
the Slavs, hesitated long, if we are to trust his chroniclers. Finally,
“strong in the purity of his intentions, he preferred to serve the interests
of the many rather than to submit to the tyranny of one man.
. . " Above
all, he considered the opportunity favourable. Lothar's absence left
the road across Alsace clear for him, and by 1 September 858 he
had established himself in the Western Kingdom, in the palace of Pon-
thion. Here he was joined by such of the magnates as had deserted
Charles the Bald before the fortified Northmen. Thence by way of
Châlons-sur-Marne, he reached first Sens, whither he was called by its
Archbishop Ganelon, and then Orleans, shewing plainly his intention of
holding out a hand to the rebels of Le Mans and Aquitaine.
Charles, for his part, on hearing of the invasion, had hastily raised
the siege of Oscellum, and was on the march for Lorraine. Louis, fearing
to have his retreat to Germany cut off, retraced his steps, whereupon
the armies of the two brothers found themselves face to face in the
neighbourhood of Brienne. But the Frankish counts, whose support
was essential for the final success of either party, had a deep and well-
founded distaste for pitched battles ; the question for them, was merely
the greater or less number of “ benefices” which they might hope to
obtain from one or the other adversary. Recourse was consequently had
to negotiation, when despite the numerous embassies sent by Charles to
Louis, the latter shewed himself the more skilful of the two. By dint of
promises, he succeeded in corrupting nearly all his brother's vassals.
Charles found himself constrained to throw up the game, and retire to
Burgundy, the one province where his supporters were still in a
majority. Louis, seeing nothing to be gained by pursuing him thither,
betook himself to the palace of Attigny, whence on 7 December he
issued a diploma as king of Western Francia, and where he spent his
time in dealing out honours and benefices to those who had come over
to his side. But in order to make his triumph secure, he still had to
.
be acknowledged and consecrated by the Church. The episcopate of
the Western Kingdom, however, remained faithful to Charles, whether
through attachment to the principles of peace and concord, or through
## p. 37 (#83) ##############################################
Faithless nobles
37
dread of a new system founded on the ambitions of the lay aristocracy,
who were ever ready to extort payment for their support out of the
estates of the ecclesiastical magnates. Only Ganelon of Sens, forgetting
that he owed his preferment to Charles's favour, had taken sides with the
new sovereign, thus leaving his name to become in tradition that of the
most notorious traitor of medieval epic. The bishops of the provinces
of Rheims and Rouen being summoned by Louis to attend a council at
Rheims, contrived under the skilful guidance of Hincmar to hinder the
meeting from being held ; protesting meanwhile their good intentions,
but declaring it necessary to summon a general assembly of the epis-
copate, and demanding guarantees for the safety of Church property.
The presence of Louis the German in the province of Rheims, where he
came to spend the Christmas season, and to take up his winter quarters,
made no difference in the Bishops' attitude.
However, Charles the Bald, with the help of the Abbot Hugh and
Count Conrad, had rallied all the supporters that remained to him at
Auxerre. On 9 January he suddenly left his retreat and marched against
his brother. Many of the German lords had set out to return to their own
country. The Western magnates, not seeing any sufficient advantage to
be gained under the new government, shewed no more hesitation in de-
serting it than they had in accepting it. At Jouy, near Soissons, where
the sudden appearance of his brother took Louis by surprise, the German
found himself left with so small a proportion of his quondam followers
that in his turn he was forced to retreat without striking a blow. By
the spring of 859 Charles had regained his authority. Naturally, he
made use of it to punish those who had betrayed him. Adalard lost his
Abbey of Saint-Bertin which was given to the Abbot Hugh, and Odo
lost his counties. What makes it plain that for the magnates the whole
affair was simply a question of material gain, is that in the negotiations
which Charles opened with Louis the point that he specially insisted on
was that the latter, in exchange for the renewal of their alliance, should
abandon to his discretion those magnates who had shared in the defection,
in order that he might deprive them of their estates. The negotiations,
moreover, proved long and thorny, despite the intervention of Lothar II.
Synods and embassies, even an interview between the two sovereigns, in
a boat midway across the Rhine, produced no results. It was not until
the colloquy held at St Castor in Coblence on 1 June 860, in the presence
of a large number of bishops, Hincmar being among them, that Louis
and Charles succeeded in coming to terms. Charles the Bald promised
to leave his magnates in possession of the fiefs which they had received
from Louis the German, reserving his right to deprive them of those
which he himself had previously bestowed on them. The oaths of peace
and concord made in 851 at Meersen were again sworn to. Louis made
a declaration to this effect in the German tongue, denouncing the
severest penalties on all who should violate the agreement, a declaration
CH. 11.
## p. 38 (#84) ##############################################
38
The divorce of Lothar II
afterwards repeated by Charles in the Romance language, and even in
German as far as the more important passages were concerned.
Briefly, it was a return to the status quo as it had been before the
sudden stroke attempted by Louis. A fresh match was about to be
played, the stake this time being the kingdom of Lothar II.
From about 860 to 870 the whole policy of the Carolingian kings
turns mainly on the question of the king of Lorraine's divorce and the
possible succession to his crown. In 855, Lothar had been compelled by
his father to marry Theutberga, a maiden of noble family, sister of a
lord named Hubert whose estates were situated on the upper valley of
the Rhone, and who seems about this time to have been made by the
Emperor governor “of the duchy between the Jura and the Alps
corresponding roughly to French Switzerland of to-day. The marriage
was evidently arranged with the object of ensuring for the young king
the support of a powerful family. But before it took place, Lothar had
had a mistress named Waldrada, by whom he had children, and this
woman seems to have acquired over him an extraordinary ascendency,
which contemporaries, as a matter of course, attribute to the use of
magic. From the very beginning of his reign, Lothar bent all his
energy towards the single end of ridding himself, by any possible means,
of the consort chosen by his father, and raising his former mistress to the
title and rank of a legitimate wife. Theutberga had not borne an heir
to Lothar and seems to have been considered incapable of doing so,
although this was not used as a weapon against her by her adversaries.
On the other hand, it was the consideration which determined the
attitude of the other sovereigns and helped to make the question of the
Lorraine divorce, it may almost be said, an international one. If
Lothar were to die childless, it would mean the partition of his in-
heritance among his relations, practically between his two uncles, for
his brother Charles, epileptic and near his end, was in no position to
interfere, while Louis II, himself without an heir, was too much occupied
in Southern Italy to be a very serious competitor.
Hostile measures against Theutberga had been taken almost at the
very beginning of the new king's reign. He hurled at his wife a charge
of incest with her brother Hubert. But a champion nominated by the
queen submitted himself on her behalf to the Judgment of God by the
ordeal of boiling water. The result was the solemn proclamation of
Theutberga's innocence, and Lothar II was obliged to yield to the
wishes of his nobles and take back his wife. Hubert, for his part, had
revolted, and under the pretext of defending his sister was indulging in
acts of brigandage in the upper valley of the Rhone. An expedition
sent against him by the king of Lorraine had produced no results.
Thus the cession made (859) by Lothar to his brother Louis II of the
three dioceses of Geneva, Lausanne and Sion had been designed, quite as
much to rid the kingdom of Lorraine of a turbulent noble as to conciliate
a
## p. 39 (#85) ##############################################
Hincmar intervenes
39
a
the good will of the Emperor. In the same way, Lothar had, the year
before, attempted to win over Charles of Provence, by ceding to him
the two dioceses of Belley and Tarentaise, in exchange, indeed, for a
treaty securing to him the inheritance of his young brother, in the
event, which seemed not unlikely, of the latter's dying childless. The
conflict of 858–9 had displayed Lothar's anxiety to keep on good terms
with both of his uncles by abstaining from interference on behalf of
either. At the same time an active campaign was being kept up against
Theutberga, organised by two prelates devoted to the king of Lorraine,
Theutgaud, Archbishop of Trèves, and Gunther, Archbishop of Cologne.
The latter even, with skilful treachery, contrived to become confessor to
the persecuted queen. In January 860, Lothar thought himself sure
enough of his position to convoke a council at Aix-la-Chapelle before
which he appeared, declaring that his wife herself acknowledged her
guilt, and petitioned to be allowed to take the veil. The bishops did
not profess themselves convinced, and demanded that a fresh assembly
should be held, to which were summoned foreign bishops and in par-
ticular Hincmar. But the latter did not respond to the invitation, and
it was at a synod composed exclusively of Lorrainers, and again held at
Aix, that Theutberga herself was present and read a confession, evidently
drawn up by Gunther and his accomplices, in which she acknowledged
herself guilty of the crimes imputed to her. On this occasion the
bishops were obliged to accept as valid the declaration thus made by the
queen and to condemn her. But they avoided coming to a decision on
the point which lay nearest to Lothar's heart, viz. the possibility of
his contracting another marriage. He was forced to content himself
with the imprisonment of Theutberga without advancing any further
towards the execution of his plans.
Some months later the dispute was re-opened. Hincmar stepped
into the lists by putting forth his voluminous treatise De divortio
Lotharii, in which he shewed clearly the weakness of the arguments used
against Theutberga, and pronounced confessions extorted by constraint
and violence null, while demanding that the question should be examined
in a general council of the bishops of the Franks. The treatise of the
Archbishop of Rheims was of exceptional importance, due not only
to the reputation which he enjoyed in the ecclesiastical world as a
theologian and canonist, but also to his political prominence in the
Western Kingdom as the adviser of Charles the Bald. The latter thus
took his place among the declared opponents of Lothar II's matrimonial
policy. He gave further proof of this attitude by affording shelter in his
kingdom to Hubert, who was forced to quit Lorraine, and to Theutberga,
who had succeeded in making her escape. Lothar, indeed, retorted
by offering a refuge to Judith, Charles's daughter, the widow of the
old English king Aethelwulf; she had just arranged to be carried off by
Baldwin Iron-arm, first Count of Flanders, son of Odoacer, whom she
CH. II.
## p. 40 (#86) ##############################################
40
Charles the Bald and his ambitions
a
married in spite of her father's opposition. And Charles at the same time
met with a check in Provence. Called in by a party of the magnates of
the country, he had imagined himself in a position to lay hands on his
nephew's kingdom. But Gerard of Roussillon was mounting guard over
the young prince, and in the face of his energetic opposition, Charles was
obliged to beat a retreat after having advanced as far as Burgundy
(861). At the same time Lothar was making advances to his other
uncle, Louis the German, whose friendship he endeavoured to make sure
of by ceding to him Alsace, or at least the prospect of possessing it
whenever the king of Lorraine should die. Lothar now thought himself
strong enough to convoke at Aix a fresh council, which this time
declared the marriage contracted with Theutberga null and void, and
consequently pronounced the king free to form a fresh union. Lothar,
before long, made use of this permission by marrying Waldrada and
having her solemnly crowned. But Theutberga, for her part, appealed
to the Pope to quash the sentences pronounced against her. Lothar
retorted by petitioning the sovereign pontiff to confirm the judgments
which had been given. At the same time, in concert with Louis the
German, he complained to the Pope of the conduct of Charles the Bald,
“who, without any show of right, was seeking to lay hands on the
inheritance of his nephews. ”
Meanwhile Charles was gaining power in his own kingdom. He had
just defeated the Bretons under their King Solomon, and suppressed a
revolt of his own son Louis the Stammerer, while the magnates who had
risen against him in 858–859 were one by one making their submission
to him. The invasions by the Northmen indeed were still going on.
Paris had again been pillaged in 861. The hordes of the viking
Weland, whom Charles had hoped to hire for money and employ
against their compatriots in the island of Oscellum, had made common
cause with the latter and had ravaged the Seine valley as far as Melun.
Charles had discovered a method of resisting them, and from the time
of the assembly at Pitres (862) began to put it into practice. It was to
have fortified works constructed along the rivers which the Normans
ascended, particularly bridges, which should bar the way to the invaders.
This new departure in tactics produced fairly good results during the
years that followed. In 862, Charles, in this way, cut off the retreat of
the bands which had forced their way into the Meaux country, and
compelled them to promise to give up the prisoners they had made and
to quit the kingdom. During the succeeding years, we find the king
taking measures to complete the defences of the valleys of the Seine and
Oise. It is true that these precautions did not hinder the Northmen
from again burning Paris in 865, and from penetrating as far as Melun
in 866. This time Charles could only rid himself of them by paying
them ransom. But on the other hand, the Marquess Robert the Strong
defeated the Northmen of the Loire on several occasions, and up to his
## p. 41 (#87) ##############################################
Death of Charles of Provence
41
death in the fight at Brissarthe (866) the valour of “the Maccabaeus of
France” opposed substantial resistance to the invaders of Anjou and
Maine.
In the affair of Lothar, neither Charles nor Hincmar would give way.
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.
But these fair professions did little to alter the actual state of things,
and the sovereigns pursued their intrigues against one another. Lothar
tried to recommend himself to Charles by procuring for Hincmar the
grant of the pallium. Louis the German, on the contrary, displayed his
enmity to him by receiving into his dominions the disgraced Archbishop
Ebbo, to whom he even gave the bishopric of Hildesheim. Meanwhile
the Scandinavian invasions raged ever more fiercely in the Western
Kingdom. In 851 the Danish followers of the sea-king Oscar, having
devastated Aquitaine, pushed up the Seine as far as Rouen, pillaged
Jumièges and Saint-Wandrille, and from thence made their way into
the Beauvais country which they ravaged with fire and sword.
Next
year another fleet desisted from pillaging Frisia to sail up the Seine.
Other hordes ascended the Loire, and in 853 burned Tours and its
## p. 33 (#79) ##############################################
Brittany and Aquitaine
33
collegiate church of St Martin, one of the most venerated sanctuaries of
Gaul. Some of the Northmen, quitting the river-banks, carried fire and
sword through the country to Angers and Poitiers. Next year Blois and
Orleans were ravaged, and a body of Danes wintered at the island of
Besse near Nantes, where they fortified themselves. On the other hand,
in 849, Nomenoë of Brittany, who was striving ever harder to make good
his position as an independent sovereign, and had just made an attempt
to set up a new ecclesiastical organisation in Brittany, withdrawing it
from the jurisdiction of the Frankish metropolitan at Tours', was again
in arms. He seized upon Rennes, and ravaged the country as far as
Le Mans. Death put an abrupt end to his successes (7 March 851), but
his son and successor, Erispoë, obtained from Charles, who had been dis-
couraged by a fruitless expedition, his recognition as king of Brittany,
now enlarged by the districts of Nantes, Retz and Rennes.
Finally, the affairs of Aquitaine only just failed to rekindle war
between the Eastern and Western kings. The authority of Charles, in
spite of Pepin's oath of fealty, and in spite of the apparent submission
of the magnates in 848, had never been placed, to the south of the Loire,
on really solid foundations. In 849 he had been obliged to despatch a
fresh expedition into Aquitaine, which had failed in taking Toulouse.
But afterwards in 852 the chance of a skirmish threw Pepin into the
hands of Sancho, Count of Gascony, who handed him over to Charles the
Bald. The king at once had the captive tonsured and interned in a
monastery. But this did little to secure the submission of Aquitaine.
The very next year the magnates of the country sent envoys to Louis
the German offering him the crown, either for himself or one of his
sons, and threatening, if he refused it, to have recourse to the heathen,
either Saracen or Northman. Louis the German agreed to send one of his
sons, Louis the Younger, whom they might put at their head. But
Charles the Bald had become aware of what was intended against him,
for he is at once found making closer alliance with Lothar, whom he met
twice, first at Valenciennes and then at Liège. In the course of the
interviews the two sovereigns guaranteed to each other the peaceful
possession of their lands for themselves and their heirs. When they
separated, Aquitaine was in full revolt. Charles hastened to collect his
1 The question of the Breton schism has given rise within the last few years to
keen discussion between M. M. R. Merlet (La Chronique de Nantes, Paris, 1896,
8vo, p. xxxix et sqq. ); R. de la Borderie (Histoire de la Bretagne, tome 11. p. 480
et sqq. ); Mgr. Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule, tome 11. p. 256 et sqq. );
L Levillain (‘Les réformes ecclésiastiques de Nomenoë' in the Moyen Age, 1901, p. 201
et sqq. ) and F. Lot ('Le schisme breton du ixe siècle'in Mélanges d'histoire
bretonne, Paris, 1907, 8vo, p. 58 et sqq. ) especially with regard to the value of the
original narratives dealing with these facts. It seems certain that the Breton prince
set up a metropolitanate of Dol. But it is more doubtful whether he created bishoprics
at Tréguier and Saint-Brieuc, which continued as before to be abbeys the Abbots
of which held the rank of Bishops.
3
C. BIED, H. VOL. III. CH. II.
## p. 34 (#80) ##############################################
34
Death of the Emperor Lothar
army, cross the Loire and march against the rebels, ravaging the
country as he went, devastated as it already was by the troops which
Louis the Younger had brought from beyond the Rhine. The news of a
colloquy between Lothar and his brother of Germany excited the distrust
of Charles the Bald, and abruptly recalled him to the north of Gaul, where
he came to Attigny to renew the alliance previously made with the
Emperor. Then, with his army he again set out for Aquitaine. But
what was of more service to him than these warlike demonstrations was the
re-appearance, south of the Loire, of Pepin II, who had escaped from his
prison. At the sight of their old prince, the Aquitanians very generally
abandoned the cause of Louis the Younger, who found himself forced to
return to Bavaria. But it does not appear that Charles the Bald looked
upon Pepin's power as very firmly established, for next year he gave a king
to the Aquitanians in the person of his own son Charles (the Younger)
whom he caused to be solemnly anointed at Limoges.
A few weeks earlier, Lothar, after having arranged for the division
of his lands among the three sons whom the Empress Ermengarde had
borne him, retired to the Abbey of Prüm. Here it was that on the
night of 28–29 September 855, his restless life reached its end.
The partition which the Emperor Lothar I had thus made of his
territories divided into three truncated portions the long strip of country
which by the treaty of 843 had fallen to him as the lot of the eldest
son of Louis the Pious. To Louis II, the eldest of the dead man's sons,
was given the imperial title, which he had borne since April 850, to-
gether with Italy. To the next, Lothar II, were bequeathed the districts
from Frisia to the Alps and between the Rhine and the Scheldt which
were to preserve his own name, for they were called Lotharii regnum,
i. e. Lorraine. For the youngest son, Charles, a new kingdom was
formed by the union of Provence proper with the duchy of Lyons
(i. e. the Lyonnais and the Viennois). For the rest, the two elder were
discontented with their share, and in an interview which they had with
their younger brother at Orbe attempted to force him into retirement
in order to take possession of his kingdom. Only the intervention of
the Provençal magnates saved the young prince Charles, and Lothar II
and Louis II were forced to carry out the last directions of their
father. But the death of Lothar I, whose position both in theory and
in fact had fitted him to act as in some sort a mediator between his
two brothers, endangered the maintenance of peace and concord.
Charles, who was a feeble epileptic, had no weight in the “ Carolingian
concert. ” It was only the kind of regency entrusted to Gerard, Count
of Vienne, renowned in legendary epic as Girard of Roussillon, which
secured the continued existence of the little kingdom of Provence.
Louis II, whose attention was concentrated on the struggle with the
Saracens, had to content himself with the part of “ Emperor of the
Italians," as the Frank annalists, not without a touch of contempt,
9
## p. 35 (#81) ##############################################
Growing disorder in the Western Kingdom
35
describe him. Only Lothar II, as ruler of the country where the Frank
empire had been founded, and whence its aristocracy had largely sprung,
might, in virtue of his comparative strength and the geographical
situation of his kingdom, count for something in the relations between
his two uncles. Thus at the very beginning of his reign we find Louis
the German seeking to come into closer touch with him at an interview
at Coblence (February 857). Lothar, however, remained constant to the
alliance made by his father with Charles the Bald, which he solemnly
renewed at Saint-Quentin.
The Western Kingdom was still in a distracted state. The treaty
concluded at Louviers with King Erispoë (10 February 856) had for a
time secured peace with the Bretons. Prince Louis, who was about to
become Erispoë's son-in-law, was to be entrusted with the government
of the march created on the Breton frontier, and known as the Duchy of
Maine. But the Northmen were becoming ever more menacing. In the
same year, 856, in the month of August, the Viking Sidroc made his
way
up the Seine and established himself at Pitres. A few weeks later he
was joined by another Danish chief, Björn Ironside, and together they
ravaged the country from the Seine to the Loire. In vain Charles,
despite the systematic opposition of a party among the magnates who
refused to join the host, shewed laudable energy in resisting their
advance, and even succeeded in inflicting a check upon them. In the
end, they established themselves at Oscellum, an island in the Seine
opposite Jeufosse, near Mantes, twice ascending the river as far as Paris,
which they plundered, taking prisoner and holding to ransom Louis,
Abbot of Saint-Denis, one of the chief personages of the kingdom. On
the other hand, Maine, in spite of the presence of Prince Louis, remained
a hotbed of disaffection to Charles. The whole family of the Count
Gauzbert, who had been beheaded for treason some few years before, was
in rebellion, supported by the magnates of Aquitaine, where Pepin II
had again taken up arms and was carrying on a successful struggle
with Charles the Young. Even outside Aquitaine discontent was rife.
Family rivalry intensified every difficulty. The clan then most in favour
with Charles was that of the Welfs, who were related to the Empress
Judith, the most prominent members of it being her brother Conrad,
lay Abbot of Jumièges and of St Riquier, who was one of the most
influential of the king's counsellors, and his nephews Conrad, Count
of Auxerre, and Hugh, Abbot of St Germain in the same town. The
relations of Queen Ermentrude, who were thrust somewhat on one side,
Adalard, Odo, Count of Troyes, and Robert the Strong, the successor in
Maine of young Louis whom the magnates had driven out, attracted
the discontented round them.
Charles had reason to be uneasy. Already in 853, the Aquitanians
had appealed to the king of Germany. In 856 the disloyal among the
magnates had again asked help of him, and only the necessity of
CH. II.
3-2
## p. 36 (#82) ##############################################
36
Fraternal quarrels
preparing for a war with the Slavs had prevented him from complying
with their request. Charles the Bald attempted to provide against such
contingencies. At Verberie near Senlis (856), at Quierzy near Laon (857
and 858), at Brienne (858), he demanded of his magnates that they
should renew their oath of fealty. In 858 he thought he could
sufficiently depend on them to venture on a new expedition against
the Northmen, who had fortified themselves in the island of Oscellum.
Charles the Younger and Pepin II of Aquitaine had promised their
help. Lothar II himself came with a Lotharingian contingent to take a
share in the campaign (summer of 858). This was the moment which
Adalard and Odo chose for addressing a fresh appeal to Louis the
German. The latter, who was on the point of marching anew against
the Slavs, hesitated long, if we are to trust his chroniclers. Finally,
“strong in the purity of his intentions, he preferred to serve the interests
of the many rather than to submit to the tyranny of one man.
. . " Above
all, he considered the opportunity favourable. Lothar's absence left
the road across Alsace clear for him, and by 1 September 858 he
had established himself in the Western Kingdom, in the palace of Pon-
thion. Here he was joined by such of the magnates as had deserted
Charles the Bald before the fortified Northmen. Thence by way of
Châlons-sur-Marne, he reached first Sens, whither he was called by its
Archbishop Ganelon, and then Orleans, shewing plainly his intention of
holding out a hand to the rebels of Le Mans and Aquitaine.
Charles, for his part, on hearing of the invasion, had hastily raised
the siege of Oscellum, and was on the march for Lorraine. Louis, fearing
to have his retreat to Germany cut off, retraced his steps, whereupon
the armies of the two brothers found themselves face to face in the
neighbourhood of Brienne. But the Frankish counts, whose support
was essential for the final success of either party, had a deep and well-
founded distaste for pitched battles ; the question for them, was merely
the greater or less number of “ benefices” which they might hope to
obtain from one or the other adversary. Recourse was consequently had
to negotiation, when despite the numerous embassies sent by Charles to
Louis, the latter shewed himself the more skilful of the two. By dint of
promises, he succeeded in corrupting nearly all his brother's vassals.
Charles found himself constrained to throw up the game, and retire to
Burgundy, the one province where his supporters were still in a
majority. Louis, seeing nothing to be gained by pursuing him thither,
betook himself to the palace of Attigny, whence on 7 December he
issued a diploma as king of Western Francia, and where he spent his
time in dealing out honours and benefices to those who had come over
to his side. But in order to make his triumph secure, he still had to
.
be acknowledged and consecrated by the Church. The episcopate of
the Western Kingdom, however, remained faithful to Charles, whether
through attachment to the principles of peace and concord, or through
## p. 37 (#83) ##############################################
Faithless nobles
37
dread of a new system founded on the ambitions of the lay aristocracy,
who were ever ready to extort payment for their support out of the
estates of the ecclesiastical magnates. Only Ganelon of Sens, forgetting
that he owed his preferment to Charles's favour, had taken sides with the
new sovereign, thus leaving his name to become in tradition that of the
most notorious traitor of medieval epic. The bishops of the provinces
of Rheims and Rouen being summoned by Louis to attend a council at
Rheims, contrived under the skilful guidance of Hincmar to hinder the
meeting from being held ; protesting meanwhile their good intentions,
but declaring it necessary to summon a general assembly of the epis-
copate, and demanding guarantees for the safety of Church property.
The presence of Louis the German in the province of Rheims, where he
came to spend the Christmas season, and to take up his winter quarters,
made no difference in the Bishops' attitude.
However, Charles the Bald, with the help of the Abbot Hugh and
Count Conrad, had rallied all the supporters that remained to him at
Auxerre. On 9 January he suddenly left his retreat and marched against
his brother. Many of the German lords had set out to return to their own
country. The Western magnates, not seeing any sufficient advantage to
be gained under the new government, shewed no more hesitation in de-
serting it than they had in accepting it. At Jouy, near Soissons, where
the sudden appearance of his brother took Louis by surprise, the German
found himself left with so small a proportion of his quondam followers
that in his turn he was forced to retreat without striking a blow. By
the spring of 859 Charles had regained his authority. Naturally, he
made use of it to punish those who had betrayed him. Adalard lost his
Abbey of Saint-Bertin which was given to the Abbot Hugh, and Odo
lost his counties. What makes it plain that for the magnates the whole
affair was simply a question of material gain, is that in the negotiations
which Charles opened with Louis the point that he specially insisted on
was that the latter, in exchange for the renewal of their alliance, should
abandon to his discretion those magnates who had shared in the defection,
in order that he might deprive them of their estates. The negotiations,
moreover, proved long and thorny, despite the intervention of Lothar II.
Synods and embassies, even an interview between the two sovereigns, in
a boat midway across the Rhine, produced no results. It was not until
the colloquy held at St Castor in Coblence on 1 June 860, in the presence
of a large number of bishops, Hincmar being among them, that Louis
and Charles succeeded in coming to terms. Charles the Bald promised
to leave his magnates in possession of the fiefs which they had received
from Louis the German, reserving his right to deprive them of those
which he himself had previously bestowed on them. The oaths of peace
and concord made in 851 at Meersen were again sworn to. Louis made
a declaration to this effect in the German tongue, denouncing the
severest penalties on all who should violate the agreement, a declaration
CH. 11.
## p. 38 (#84) ##############################################
38
The divorce of Lothar II
afterwards repeated by Charles in the Romance language, and even in
German as far as the more important passages were concerned.
Briefly, it was a return to the status quo as it had been before the
sudden stroke attempted by Louis. A fresh match was about to be
played, the stake this time being the kingdom of Lothar II.
From about 860 to 870 the whole policy of the Carolingian kings
turns mainly on the question of the king of Lorraine's divorce and the
possible succession to his crown. In 855, Lothar had been compelled by
his father to marry Theutberga, a maiden of noble family, sister of a
lord named Hubert whose estates were situated on the upper valley of
the Rhone, and who seems about this time to have been made by the
Emperor governor “of the duchy between the Jura and the Alps
corresponding roughly to French Switzerland of to-day. The marriage
was evidently arranged with the object of ensuring for the young king
the support of a powerful family. But before it took place, Lothar had
had a mistress named Waldrada, by whom he had children, and this
woman seems to have acquired over him an extraordinary ascendency,
which contemporaries, as a matter of course, attribute to the use of
magic. From the very beginning of his reign, Lothar bent all his
energy towards the single end of ridding himself, by any possible means,
of the consort chosen by his father, and raising his former mistress to the
title and rank of a legitimate wife. Theutberga had not borne an heir
to Lothar and seems to have been considered incapable of doing so,
although this was not used as a weapon against her by her adversaries.
On the other hand, it was the consideration which determined the
attitude of the other sovereigns and helped to make the question of the
Lorraine divorce, it may almost be said, an international one. If
Lothar were to die childless, it would mean the partition of his in-
heritance among his relations, practically between his two uncles, for
his brother Charles, epileptic and near his end, was in no position to
interfere, while Louis II, himself without an heir, was too much occupied
in Southern Italy to be a very serious competitor.
Hostile measures against Theutberga had been taken almost at the
very beginning of the new king's reign. He hurled at his wife a charge
of incest with her brother Hubert. But a champion nominated by the
queen submitted himself on her behalf to the Judgment of God by the
ordeal of boiling water. The result was the solemn proclamation of
Theutberga's innocence, and Lothar II was obliged to yield to the
wishes of his nobles and take back his wife. Hubert, for his part, had
revolted, and under the pretext of defending his sister was indulging in
acts of brigandage in the upper valley of the Rhone. An expedition
sent against him by the king of Lorraine had produced no results.
Thus the cession made (859) by Lothar to his brother Louis II of the
three dioceses of Geneva, Lausanne and Sion had been designed, quite as
much to rid the kingdom of Lorraine of a turbulent noble as to conciliate
a
## p. 39 (#85) ##############################################
Hincmar intervenes
39
a
the good will of the Emperor. In the same way, Lothar had, the year
before, attempted to win over Charles of Provence, by ceding to him
the two dioceses of Belley and Tarentaise, in exchange, indeed, for a
treaty securing to him the inheritance of his young brother, in the
event, which seemed not unlikely, of the latter's dying childless. The
conflict of 858–9 had displayed Lothar's anxiety to keep on good terms
with both of his uncles by abstaining from interference on behalf of
either. At the same time an active campaign was being kept up against
Theutberga, organised by two prelates devoted to the king of Lorraine,
Theutgaud, Archbishop of Trèves, and Gunther, Archbishop of Cologne.
The latter even, with skilful treachery, contrived to become confessor to
the persecuted queen. In January 860, Lothar thought himself sure
enough of his position to convoke a council at Aix-la-Chapelle before
which he appeared, declaring that his wife herself acknowledged her
guilt, and petitioned to be allowed to take the veil. The bishops did
not profess themselves convinced, and demanded that a fresh assembly
should be held, to which were summoned foreign bishops and in par-
ticular Hincmar. But the latter did not respond to the invitation, and
it was at a synod composed exclusively of Lorrainers, and again held at
Aix, that Theutberga herself was present and read a confession, evidently
drawn up by Gunther and his accomplices, in which she acknowledged
herself guilty of the crimes imputed to her. On this occasion the
bishops were obliged to accept as valid the declaration thus made by the
queen and to condemn her. But they avoided coming to a decision on
the point which lay nearest to Lothar's heart, viz. the possibility of
his contracting another marriage. He was forced to content himself
with the imprisonment of Theutberga without advancing any further
towards the execution of his plans.
Some months later the dispute was re-opened. Hincmar stepped
into the lists by putting forth his voluminous treatise De divortio
Lotharii, in which he shewed clearly the weakness of the arguments used
against Theutberga, and pronounced confessions extorted by constraint
and violence null, while demanding that the question should be examined
in a general council of the bishops of the Franks. The treatise of the
Archbishop of Rheims was of exceptional importance, due not only
to the reputation which he enjoyed in the ecclesiastical world as a
theologian and canonist, but also to his political prominence in the
Western Kingdom as the adviser of Charles the Bald. The latter thus
took his place among the declared opponents of Lothar II's matrimonial
policy. He gave further proof of this attitude by affording shelter in his
kingdom to Hubert, who was forced to quit Lorraine, and to Theutberga,
who had succeeded in making her escape. Lothar, indeed, retorted
by offering a refuge to Judith, Charles's daughter, the widow of the
old English king Aethelwulf; she had just arranged to be carried off by
Baldwin Iron-arm, first Count of Flanders, son of Odoacer, whom she
CH. II.
## p. 40 (#86) ##############################################
40
Charles the Bald and his ambitions
a
married in spite of her father's opposition. And Charles at the same time
met with a check in Provence. Called in by a party of the magnates of
the country, he had imagined himself in a position to lay hands on his
nephew's kingdom. But Gerard of Roussillon was mounting guard over
the young prince, and in the face of his energetic opposition, Charles was
obliged to beat a retreat after having advanced as far as Burgundy
(861). At the same time Lothar was making advances to his other
uncle, Louis the German, whose friendship he endeavoured to make sure
of by ceding to him Alsace, or at least the prospect of possessing it
whenever the king of Lorraine should die. Lothar now thought himself
strong enough to convoke at Aix a fresh council, which this time
declared the marriage contracted with Theutberga null and void, and
consequently pronounced the king free to form a fresh union. Lothar,
before long, made use of this permission by marrying Waldrada and
having her solemnly crowned. But Theutberga, for her part, appealed
to the Pope to quash the sentences pronounced against her. Lothar
retorted by petitioning the sovereign pontiff to confirm the judgments
which had been given. At the same time, in concert with Louis the
German, he complained to the Pope of the conduct of Charles the Bald,
“who, without any show of right, was seeking to lay hands on the
inheritance of his nephews. ”
Meanwhile Charles was gaining power in his own kingdom. He had
just defeated the Bretons under their King Solomon, and suppressed a
revolt of his own son Louis the Stammerer, while the magnates who had
risen against him in 858–859 were one by one making their submission
to him. The invasions by the Northmen indeed were still going on.
Paris had again been pillaged in 861. The hordes of the viking
Weland, whom Charles had hoped to hire for money and employ
against their compatriots in the island of Oscellum, had made common
cause with the latter and had ravaged the Seine valley as far as Melun.
Charles had discovered a method of resisting them, and from the time
of the assembly at Pitres (862) began to put it into practice. It was to
have fortified works constructed along the rivers which the Normans
ascended, particularly bridges, which should bar the way to the invaders.
This new departure in tactics produced fairly good results during the
years that followed. In 862, Charles, in this way, cut off the retreat of
the bands which had forced their way into the Meaux country, and
compelled them to promise to give up the prisoners they had made and
to quit the kingdom. During the succeeding years, we find the king
taking measures to complete the defences of the valleys of the Seine and
Oise. It is true that these precautions did not hinder the Northmen
from again burning Paris in 865, and from penetrating as far as Melun
in 866. This time Charles could only rid himself of them by paying
them ransom. But on the other hand, the Marquess Robert the Strong
defeated the Northmen of the Loire on several occasions, and up to his
## p. 41 (#87) ##############################################
Death of Charles of Provence
41
death in the fight at Brissarthe (866) the valour of “the Maccabaeus of
France” opposed substantial resistance to the invaders of Anjou and
Maine.
In the affair of Lothar, neither Charles nor Hincmar would give way.
