In spite of this separatist movement, the kinglets (reguli) set up in
888 still attributed a certain supremacy to Arnulf as the last representa-
tive of the Carolingian family.
888 still attributed a certain supremacy to Arnulf as the last representa-
tive of the Carolingian family.
Cambridge Medieval History - v3 - Germany and the Western Empire
Thus they commend
themselves to these lords, and in their turn become vassals. This
process was at first encouraged by the sovereign, as facilitating the
assembling of the host when necessary, and this it is which explains the
provisions in the capitulary of 847 ordering every free man to choose
himself a lord, the latter being charged with the office of leading his
men to war. But an important transformation had besides taken place
in the host. The infantry, which in the eighth century had formed the
chief strength of the Frankish armies, had given way to cavalry. By
the end of the ninth century, the Carolingian armies are almost wholly
composed of horse-soldiers. But the mounted warrior cannot be a mere
free man, for in order to maintain his steed and his handful of followers
he must hold some land or benefice from his lord. He has become the
knight, the miles, the last rank in the feudal hierarchy. Counts and
knights, however, when summoned by the king, shew no great eagerness
to respond to the appeal. Constantly the attempts made by Charles to
resist the Northmen are brought to nothing by the refusal of his vassals
to follow him. Even when the Frankish force is under arms, it is only a
sort of landwehr or militia, ill-adapted for fighting. The civilised Franks
have lost the warlike qualities of their half-barbarous forefathers. It is
not with such materials that a king or any other leader could expect to
succeed against the bands of the Scandinavians who were trained to
warfare and made it their habitual occupation.
## p. 55 (#101) #############################################
55
CHAPTER III.
THE CAROLINGIAN KINGDOMS (877-918).
The death of Charles the Bald did not ensure the triumph of Carlo-
man, who was soon forced by an epidemic which broke out in his army
to make the best of his way back to Germany. It seemed, however,
as if it would be the signal for renewed civil discord in Gaul. When Louis
the Stammerer received news at Orville near Laon of the pitiable end of
his father, he hastened, without the assent of the magnates, to distribute
to such of his partisans as happened to be around him, “honours,"
counties, estates and abbeys, thus violating an engagement made at
Quierzy. Accordingly, when he was about to go into Francia to receive
the oath of fidelity from his new subjects, he learned that the magnates,
rallying round Boso and the Abbot Hugh, and supported by the
widowed Empress Richilda, refused him obedience, and, as a sign of
their displeasure, were ravaging the country. Nevertheless, thanks,
no doubt, to the mediation of Hincmar, and after some time had been
spent in arranging terms, the rebels agreed to a settlement. Richilda
was reconciled to her step-son, handing over to him the royal insignia
and the deed by which Charles the Bald before his death had nominated
his heir. The magnates, whose rights the king promised to recognise,
all made their submission. The Abbot Hugh even became one of the
most influential counsellors of Louis the Stammerer. On 8 December,
after having sternly exhorted the new sovereign to respect the rights
of his vassals, Hincmar crowned him King of the West-Franks in the
church of Compiègne.
Louis, however, was not the man to carry out his father's imperialist
policy, in spite of the opportunity which occurred for it the next year.
Anarchy set in more fiercely than ever in Italy. Carloman had obtained
from his brothers the cession of their rights over the peninsula, in
exchange for those which he possessed over Lorraine in virtue of a
partition treaty concluded the year before (877), but he was in no
plight to attempt another expedition. Lambert, Duke of Spoleto,
and his brother-in-law Adalbert, Duke or Marquess of Tuscany, were
making open war upon John VIII, and plainly intended to bring back
сн. ПІ,
## p. 56 (#102) #############################################
56
Death of Louis the Stammerer
to Rome the political opponents whom the Pope had formerly expelled,
particularly the celebrated Formosus, Bishop of Porto. So John VIII
decided upon another attempt to make the Western Kingdom his ally.
After having bought a peace from the Saracens, who were still a menace
to the Papal States, he embarked on a Neapolitan vessel and landed at
Arles, where Boso, who had returned to his former duchy, and his wife
Ermengarde, welcomed him with assurances of devotion and in company
with him ascended the Rhone as far as Lyons. After somewhat laborious
negotiations with Louis the Stammerer, a council presided over by the
Pope met at Troyes, at the beginning of autumn. But there were
few practical results attained from the assembly; little was settled,
except a few points relating to discipline, and the confirmation of the
sentence of excommunication against Lambert, Adalbert, and their
supporters. John VIII would have wished to see Louis put himself
at the head of another expedition against the enemies of the Holy See,
whether rebel counts or Saracens: the king, however, seems not to
have had the least inclination for such a course, and John VIII was
forced to turn to that one among the magnates who, if only by his
connexion with Italy, seemed best fitted to take up the task which the
Carolingians refused to accept, namely Boso. It was in his company
that the Pope re-crossed the Alps, at the end of the year, calling a
great meeting of the bishops and lay lords of Northern Italy to assemble
at Pavia. In a letter which he addressed at this time to Engilberga,
widow of Louis II, he anticipated for her son-in-law the most brilliant
prospects. Ermengarde's husband might look forward to the Lombard
crown, perhaps even to the imperial one. But Boso himself did nothing
to forward the ambitious views of the Pontiff on his behalf. At Pavia,
under one pretext or another, he quitted John VIII and made his way
back to Gaul.
Louis the Stammerer, who had concluded a treaty at Fouron' with
his cousins of Germany for the partition of Louis II's inheritance, and
being free from anxiety in that quarter, had just resolved upon an
expedition against Bernard, Marquess of Gothia, who had not made his
submission at the beginning of the reign and still remained contumacious.
But a change came over the situation with the death of King Louis on
10 April 879. The leaders of the party, opposed to the Abbot Hugh
and to the magnates actually in power, made use of the event to appeal
for aid to the foreigner. At the instigation of one of the Welfs,
Conrad, Count of Paris, and of Joscelin, Abbot of Saint-Germain-des-
Prés, Louis of Saxony entered the kingdom from the west to dispute
possession of their father's inheritance with Louis III and Carloman,
the two young sons of Louis the Stammerer. He penetrated as far as
1 Three places in Belgium, in the province of Liège, bear the name of Fouron.
It cannot be positively ascertained at which of them the conferences took place which
led up to the treaty.
## p. 57 (#103) #############################################
Boso, King of Provence
57
a
Verdun, ravaging the country as he went. But those who took up
his cause were few in number. Envoys from the Abbot Hugh, from
Boso, and Theodoric, Count of Autun, who were at the head of affairs
in the Western Kingdom, had no great difficulty in persuading the king
of Germany to abandon his enterprise in return for a promise of the
cession of that part of Lorraine which by the Treaty of Meersen fell
to the share of Charles the Bald. In the month of September the
coronation of the two sons of Louis the Stammerer by his marriage
with Ansgarde, took place quietly at Ferrières. But Ansgarde had
been afterwards repudiated by her husband, who had taken a second
wife named Adelaide, the mother of his son Charles the Simple. The
legitimacy of Louis III and Carloman was not universally admitted,
discontent still existed, and before the end of 879 the Frankish kingdom
was threatened by a new danger. Boso, at the instance of his wife,
Ermengarde, who, by birth the daughter of an emperor, was dissatisfied
with her position as the wife of a duke, took advantage of the weakness
of the kings to re-establish for his own benefit the former kingdom
of Charles of Provence (that is, the counties of Lyons and Vienne with
Provence) and to have himself proclaimed king of it at an assembly of
bishops held at Mantaille, near Vienne. little later he was solemnly
crowned by the Archbishop, Aurelian, at Lyons (autumn of 879).
In the spring of 880 Conrad and Joscelin again called in Louis
of Saxony. This second attempt had no better success than the first,
and Louis was obliged to return to his own dominions after having
. concluded with his cousins the Treaty of Ribemont, which again
confirmed him in possession of the former kingdom of Lothar II. His
tenure of it, however, was somewhat insecure, since the Lyons and
Vienne districts were under Boso's control. The Archbishop of Besançon
appears to have recognised the usurper. In the north, Hugh, an
illegitimate son of Lothar II, had taken up arms and was also en-
deavouring to make himself independent. Confronted with these dangers,
and also with incessant attacks by the Danish pirates, the Carolingian
kings felt the necessity for union. By a treaty agreed to at Amiens
in the beginning of 880, Louis III was to have Francia and Neustria,
Carloman taking Aquitaine and Burgundy, with the task of making head
against Boso. None the less, the two kings were agreed in desiring an
interview at Gondreville with one of their cousins from Germany, and
taking concerted measures against the rebels. It was Charles the Fat,
the ruler of Alemannia, who, on his return from Italy whither he had
gone to secure his proclamation as king by an assembly of magnates
held at Ravenna, met Louis III and Carloman at this last fraternal
colloquium in June 880. The three sovereigns began by joining forces
against Hugh of Lorraine, whose brother-in-law, Count Theobald, was
defeated and compelled to take refuge in Provence. The allies then
directed their efforts against the latter country. The Count of
CH. INI.
## p. 58 (#104) #############################################
58
Charles the Fat in Rome
Mâcon, who adhered to Boso, was forced to surrender, and the Caro-
lingian kings, pursuing their advance without encountering any resistance, ,
laid siege to Vienne where the usurper had fortified himself. The
unlooked for defection of Charles the Fat put a stop to the campaign.
For a long time John VIII, compelled by the desertion of Boso to go
back to the policy of an alliance with Germany, had been demanding
the return of Charles to Italy. Suddenly abandoning the siege, the
king again crossed the Alps in order to go to Rome and there to receive
the imperial crown from the hands of the Pope (February 881) while his
cousins, unable to subdue Boso at once, returned to their dominions,
leaving the task of blockading Vienne to the Duke of Burgundy, Richard
the Justiciar, who was own brother, as it happened, to the rebel king of
Provence. Queen Ermengarde, who was defending the place, was obliged
to surrender a few months later (September 882).
Charles the Fat made no long stay at Rome. As early as February 881
he took the road leading northwards. It is true that the new Emperor
made a fresh expedition into Italy at the end of the same year, though
he got no farther than Ravenna. Here the Pope came to meet him
in order to try and obtain from him measures likely to protect the
patrimony of St Peter from the attacks of the dukes of Spoleto. But
the death of Louis of Saxony (20 January 882) now recalled the Emperor
to Germany. This event made Charles master of the whole Eastern
Kingdom, for Carloman of Bavaria, who by an agreement made in
879 with Louis had secured to the latter his whole inheritance, had
died in 880. Carloman's illegitimate son Arnulf had been by the terms
of the same treaty forced to content himself with the duchy of Carinthia.
Hugh of Lorraine, who still under pretext of claiming his paternal
heritage had again been indulging in acts of brigandage, had been
defeated by Louis some time before his death and constrained to take
refuge in Burgundy.
In the Western Kingdom, Louis III of France had died of a fall
from his horse on 5 August 882. Carloman, summoned from Burgundy,
received the magnates' oaths of fidelity at Quierzy and thus became
the sole sovereign of the Western Kingdom. His brief reign is wholly
taken up with fruitless struggles against the Northmen. On 12 December
884 he also was carried off by an accident while out hunting. Louis
the Stammerer's posthumous son, Charles, known later as the Simple,
was by reason of his youth unfit to reign. Thus the Frankish nobles
appealed to Charles the Fat, in whose hands were thus concentrated
all the kingdoms which had gone to make up the empire of Charles the
Great. But the Emperor, though a man of piety and learning, was very
far from possessing the activity and vigour demanded by a position
now more difficult than ever. For the ravages of the Northmen had re-
doubled in violence during the preceding years. Established permanently
in Flanders, they took advantage of their situation to ravage at once what
## p. 59 (#105) #############################################
The Northmen
59
was formerly Lorraine and the kingdoms of the East and West. A victory
gained over them at Thion on the Sambre by Louis of Saxony in 880,
had led to no results, for in the same year they burnt Nimeguen, while
another band made their way into Saxony. The Abbot Joscelin had in
vain attempted to drive out those on the Scheldt, who from their fortified
camp at Courtrai made perpetual raids for pillage into the Western King-
dom. Nevertheless, King Louis III won over then at Saucourt in Ponthieu
a renowned victory, commemorated by a cantilène, a popular song in cele-
bration of it, in the German language which has come down to us. Yet
it did not hinder the Danes settled at Ghent from reaching the valley of
the Meuse and forming a new entrenched camp at Elsloo. During the
winter of 881-882 they burnt Liège, Tongres, Cologne, Bonn, Stavelot,
Prüm and Aix, and took possession of Trèves. Walo, the Bishop of
Metz, who with Bertulf, Archbishop of Trèves, had put himself at the
head of the defenders, was defeated and killed in April 882. At the
assembly held at Worms (May 882), Charles the Fat, who was returning
from Italy, determined to act with vigour, and gathered a numerous
army at the head of which he placed to second his efforts two tried
warriors, Arnulf of Carinthia, and Henry, Count or Duke of Thuringia.
But on the point of attacking the camp at Elsloo his courage failed.
He fell back on the dangerous method, already too often practised by
the Carolingians, of negotiating with the invaders. Of their leaders
Godefrid (Guðröðr) obtained Frisia as a fief on condition of receiving
baptism, and Sigefrid (Sigröðr) was paid to withdraw.
The chief part of the great Northman army then turned to attack
the Western Kingdom. By the autumn they were ravaging it up to
the gates of Rheims. The aged archbishop, Hincmar, was forced to
leave his metropolitan city and flee for refuge to Epernay, where he died
on 21 December 882. Carloman succeeded in checking the Danes more
than once on the banks of the Aisne and of the Vicogne, but the
invasion was not beaten off. Another fortified camp was formed by
the Northmen at Condé on the Scheldt. The bands which came forth
from it next year seized Amiens, and ravaged the district between the
Seine and the Oise without meeting with resistance. Carloman was
obliged to negotiate with them, and, thanks to the intervention of
Sigefrid, he obtained a pledge that the band in cantonments near
Amiens should evacuate the Western Kingdom in consideration of the
enormous sum of 12,000 pounds of silver (884). The engagement,
moreover, was respected. The main part of the great Northman army
crossed over to England, but other bands passed into the kingdom of
Lorraine, and a party among them settled down behind the woods and
marshes which covered the site of the present town of Louvain.
Such was the position of things at the time when Charles the Fat
became sole ruler of the Frankish Empire and the magnates of France
and Lorraine came to do homage to their new sovereign at Gondreville
CH, 111.
## p. 60 (#106) #############################################
60
Union under Charles the Fat
1
near Toul and Ponthion. The beginning of the reign was marked, besides,
by several victories gained over the Northmen who had penetrated into
Saxony. Other bands were defeated by Count Henry of Alemannia
and Liutbert, Archbishop of Mayence. But Hugh of Lorraine had
decided that the occasion was a good one for again putting forward
his claim to his father's kingdom, with the support of his brother-in-law,
the Northman Godefrid. Count Henry, whose task it was to resist them,
chose to employ treachery. Godefrid was imprudent enough to consent
to an interview in the course of which he was assassinated, and the
Franks succeeded in inflicting a check on his leaderless troops. Hugh,
being allured to Gondreville under pretext of negotiations, also fell into
an ambush. He was blinded, tonsured, and immured in the Abbey
of Prüm. His sister, Gisela, Godefrid's widow, was a little later to
die as Abbess of the Convent of Nivelles. This partial success was,
however, balanced by the defeat suffered in front of Louvain by the
army raised in Lorraine and in the Western Kingdom. Charles seemed
indeed to be losing his interest in this unceasing war. At the assembly
which he held at Frankfort at the beginning of the year 885, his only
care seemed to be to procure the recognition of his illegitimate son
Bernard's right to succeed him. His wishes, however, were opposed
by the magnates. Charles counted on the support of Pope Hadrian III,
the successor of John VIII who had been assassinated in 884, but
Hadrian died 8 July 885, and this event forced the Emperor finally
to give up his project. The successor of the dead Pope, Stephen V,.
had been elected without consulting Charles the Fat, and so much
was the Emperor displeased that he thought it necessary to cross the
Alps yet again. But he lingered in the north of the peninsula while
his confidential agent, the Arch-Chancellor Liutward, Bishop of Vercelli,
went to Rome to negotiate with the Pope. An outbreak of sedition
at Pavia nearly cost the Emperor his life, and he decided not to advance
farther, but to take the road for Gaul once more, whither he was recalled
by the imperious necessity of resisting the Northmen.
Carloman's death had liberated the bands with whom he had treated
at Amiens from their pledge to respect the Western Kingdom. Large
numbers of the Northmen who had crossed over into England came back
during the summer of 885 to rejoin their compatriots at Louvain who,
for their part, had got as far as the mouth of the Seine. Other com-
panies, coming from the Lower Scheldt, joined them there. On 25 July
they entered Rouen, and their feet, three hundred strong, carrying
some forty thousand men, began to push up the Seine. A Neustrian
army which attempted to bar the way to the invaders was obliged to
beat a retreat without having succeeded in defending the fortified bridge
which Charles the Bald had built at Pitres, and the great viking fleet,
reinforced by Danes from the Loire, arrived before Paris on 24 Novem-
ber, covering the river's surface for more than two leagues. The city
## p. 61 (#107) #############################################
Siege of Paris
61
а
of Paris at this time did not extend beyond the island of the Cité.
On
the right bank, however, and especially on the left, lay the suburbs with
their churches and abbeys, Saint-Merri and Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois
to the north, Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Sainte-Geneviève to the south,
with the houses, gardens and vineyards surrounding them.
Of course
no wall enclosed these suburbs. The city itself had been without a ram-
part in the days of Charles the Bald, since the Roman fortifications there
as elsewhere had for long centuries fallen into ruins. Thus the Danes
had on several occasions descended on the town and pillaged it without
let or hindrance. The last of their incursions dated from 866. But
since then Paris had made preparation for resistance. Under the super-
intendence of Odo, the count, son of Robert the Strong, helped by
Bishop Joscelin, the old wall had been rebuilt. Two bridges establishing
communication between the island and both banks of the Seine barred
the way to the viking ships. One Sigefrid, who seems to have been in
command of the expedition, made a demand for himself and his
followers of free access to the upper valley of the Seine. Odo and
Joscelin refused. A general assault next morning was repulsed with loss,
and the Northmen were obliged to undertake a formal siege.
This lasted for long months, varied by attacks upon the bridges and
the works defending them on both banks of the river, and also by
pillaging expeditions into the neighbouring districts. But the Parisians
met the efforts of their assailants with indomitable energy and endurance.
On 16 April 886 Joscelin was carried off by sickness. Odo tried a
sortie in order to seek for reinforcements; it proved successful, and
he made use of his opportunity to send pressing appeals to the Emperor
and his counsellors. He then for the second time traversed the enemy
lines to re-enter the besieged city. Meanwhile, Charles, on his return
from Italy, had held a great assembly at Metz, and had then set out,
at a deliberate rate, to go to the succour of the Parisians. Having
reached Quierzy he sent forward his best warrior Count Henry of
Alemannia, at the head of a detachment of his men. But in attempting
to reconnoitre the enemy's camp, Henry fell, with his horse, into one
of the fosses dug by the besiegers, and was killed (28 August). His
death threw a gloom over his followers, and the relieving detachment
which he had been leading fell back. On 28 October the Emperor came
up in person before Paris, and the inhabitants could see his army on
the heights of Montmartre. But instead of crushing the heathen between
his troops and the city walls, Charles once more began negotiations with
them. Sigefrid consented to raise the siege, in return for a sum of
seven hundred pounds in silver, and permission for his followers to go
and winter in Burgundy, with the right to go up the Seine freely. The
At the end of the ninth century a fairly general movement took place to
restore the walls of cities so as to ensure them against a coup-de-main of the Northman
bands.
>
CH. III.
## p. 62 (#108) #############################################
62
Deposition of Charles the Fat
Parisians, however, refused to agree to this last condition and to allow
the viking vessels to pass under the fortified bridges which they had
defended with so much valour. The Danes were obliged to draw their
boats to land to get them above the city by the river bank, but, none
the less, they reached Burgundy, which they ravaged. Sens, in particular,
stood a siege of six months.
In the meanwhile the Emperor fell sick and returned to Alsace. During
the Easter season he held an assembly at Waiblingen near Stuttgart, at
which was present, among others, Berengar, Marquess of Friuli. From
thence he went to Kirchen in the Breisgau, where he was sought out by
Ermengarde, widow of Boso, with her young son Louis. Boso, in spite
of the capture of Vienne and the efforts of the Carolingian kings and their
lieutenants, had succeeded in maintaining his ground in the kingdom he
had created for himself, and died unsubdued (11 January 887). The son
whom he left, Louis, was still almost a child when his mother brought
him to the Emperor. Charles the Fat received him kindly, recognised his
right to succeed his father, and even went through some kind of ceremony
of adopting him. But the young prince was not long to be benefited
by his protection. The discontent of the magnates with the Emperor,
whom they accused of weakness and incapacity, and with the counsellor
by whom he was chiefly guided, his chancellor Liutward, Bishop of
Vercelli, grew greater every day. Charles endeavoured to placate them
by dismissing his chancellor, but their dissatisfaction still continued
undiminished, and at the end of 887 a revolt broke out, facilitated by
Charles's illness and physical incapacity. The rebels, in an assembly
held at Tribur near Darmstadt, formally deposed the Emperor. He
returned to Neidingen on the Danube near Constance, where he made
a pitiable end on 13 January 888, while his former vassals proclaimed in
his room Arnulf of Carinthia, son of Carloman of Bavaria, of illegitimate
birth, it is true, but well known for his warlike qualities, and, in the
eyes of the magnates, the only prince capable of defending the Empire,
or at least the kingdom of Germany, against the enemies threatening it
on every side.
The deposition of Charles the Fat marks the epoch of the final
dismemberment of the Empire of Charlemagne. Even contemporaries
were conscious of this. “Then,” said the Lotharingian chronicler,
Regino of Prüm, in a justly famous passage, “the kingdoms which had
been subject to the government of Charles split up into fragments,
breaking the bond which united them, and without waiting for their
natural lord, each one sought to create a king of its own, drawn from
within itself; which thing was the cause of long wars, not that there
were lacking Frankish princes worthy of empire by their noble birth,
their courage, and their wisdom, but because their equality in origin,
dignity and power was a fresh cause for discord. None of them in fact
was sufficiently raised above the rest to make them willing to submit
## p. 63 (#109) #############################################
Final division of the Empire
63
to his authority. " The West Franks elected as king Odo, the valiant de-
fender of Paris. In Italy Berengar, Marquess of Friuli, and Guy (Guido),
Duke of Spoleto, contended for the crown. Louis of Provence held the
valley of the Rhone as far as Lyons. Finally, a new claimant, the Welf
Rodolph, son of Conrad, Count of Auxerre, already duke of “the duchy
beyond the Jura” comprising the dioceses of Geneva, Lausanne and Sion,
claimed the ancient kingdom of Lorraine, without, however, succeeding
in building up more than a “ kingdom of Burgundy,” restricted to the
Helvetian pagi and the countries which formed the ancient diocese of
Besançon.
The expressions used by Regino must not, however, be understood
too literally. The kings whom the new nations “ drew from within
themselves were all of the Austrasian race and had their origin in
Francia, their families having been for hardly more than two or three
generations settled in their new counties. The dismemberment, which
began under Louis the Pious and was finally consummated in 888, was
by no means caused by a reaction of the different nations within the
Carolingian Empire against the political and administrative unity im-
posed by Charles the Great. The building up of new nationalities may
have been largely the work of the chances of the various partitions which
had taken place since the Treaty of Verdun. Nevertheless the fact that
Louis the German and his heirs had as their portion the populations
of Teutonic speech, and Charles the Bald and his successors those of the
Romance language, no doubt accentuated such consciousness as these
peoples might have of their individuality, a consciousness further
strengthened by the antagonism between the sovereigns. Italy, on
the other hand, had long been accustomed to live under a king of its
own, a little outside the sphere of the other Frankish kingdoms. Besides
these more remote causes, we must bear in mind the need which each
fraction of the Empire felt of having a protector, an effective head to
organise resistance against the Slavs, the Saracens or the Northmen. A
single Emperor must often be at too great a distance from the point
at which danger threatened. “ The idea of the Empire, the idea of the
Frankish kingdom recedes into the background, and gives place to an
attachment to the more restricted country of one's birth, to the race
to which one belongs? . ” Under the influence of geographical situation
and of language, or even through the chances of political alliances, new
groups had been formed, and each of these placed at its head the man
best fitted to defend it against the innumerable enemies who for half
a century had been devastating all parts of the Empire.
In spite of this separatist movement, the kinglets (reguli) set up in
888 still attributed a certain supremacy to Arnulf as the last representa-
tive of the Carolingian family. Odo sought his presence at Worms in
.
1 G. Monod. Du rôle de l'opposition des races dans la dissolution de l'Empire
carolingien, p. 13.
CH. III.
## p. 64 (#110) #############################################
64
Arnulf
order to place himself under his protection (August 888) before going
to Rheims to receive the crown of Western Francia. At Trent,
Berengar also took up the attitude of a vassal in order to obtain from
Arnulf the recognition of his Italian kingship. Rodolph of Burgundy
yielded to the threat of an expedition to be sent against him, and came
and made his submission at Ratisbon. A little later, at Worms, it was
the turn of young Louis of Provence (894). Doubtless no homage
strictly so called was performed, such as would establish between Arnulf
and the neighbouring sovereigns a relation of positive vassalage with
the reciprocal obligations it entailed. There was, however, a ceremony
analogous to that of homage, and the recognition of a kind of over-
lordship belonging, at any rate in theory, to the King of Germany.
Thus between Arnulf and the rulers of the states which had arisen from
the dismemberment of the Carolingian Empire peace seemed assured.
But it was less safe against enemies from without and against revolts
on the part of the German magnates. Though in 889 Arnulf had
received an embassy from the Northmen bearing pacific messages, the
struggle had begun again in 891. The Danes had invaded Lorraine
and had inflicted on Count Arnulf and Archbishop Sunderold of Mayence
the bloody defeat of La Gueule (26 June) balanced, it is true, by the
success won by King Arnulf in the same year on the banks of the Dyle.
On the other hand, the struggle against the Moravian kingdom founded
by a prince named Svátopluk (Zwentibold) was going on amidst alterna-
tions of success and failure. In 892 Arnulf, with the assistance of the
Slovene duke Braslav, led a successful expedition against the Moravians,
but he had been imprudent enough to call to his aid a troop of Hun-
garians, thus, as it were, pointing out to the Magyar immigrants from
Asia the road into the kingdom of Germany which a few years later
was to have such a fearful experience of them. Two years later (894)
(
the death of Svátopluk led to the recognition of Arnulf's authority
by his two sons, Moimir and Svátopluk II, and the civil war which
before long broke out between them enabled the Franks to intervene
successfully in Moravia. But like Charles the Fat, Arnulf was haunted
by the dream of wearing the imperial crown. At the opening of his
reign the fear of a revolt among the discontented magnates of Swabia
had alone prevented him from responding to the appeals made to him
by Pope Stephen V (890). Events in Italy now offered him the oppor-
tunity of renewing his attempts in that quarter.
The two rivals, Guy and Berengar, who after the deposition of
Charles the Fat disputed for the crown of Italy, were each recognised
as king by a certain number of adherents. A truce had been arranged
between them up to the beginning of the year 889. They used this
respite merely to seek support in foreign countries. Berengar, for twenty
years the faithful ally of the Eastern Carolingians, received reinforcements
from Germany. Guy, after an unsuccessful attempt to secure for himself
## p. 65 (#111) #############################################
Italian Rivals
65
the crown of the Western Kingdom, had recruited contingents in the
district of Burgundy round Dijon, which was his native land. The
Italian lords again took sides with one competitor or the other, with
the exception of the most powerful of them all, Adalbert, Marquess of
Tuscany, who contrived to maintain a prudent neutrality. War then
broke out afresh. A bloody battle—a rare event in the ninth century-
.
in which some 7000 men fought on either side was waged for a whole
day on the banks of the Trebbia. Berengar, thoroughly worsted, was
forced to retreat beyond the Po, where Verona, Cremona and Brescia
still remained faithful to him, and to abandon the struggle with Guy.
The latter seems not to have troubled himself to follow up his enemy's
flight. His victory gave him possession of the palace of Pavia, that is,
of the capital of the Italian kingdom. In the middle of February 889,
he held a great assembly of bishops there, to whom he solemnly promised
that church property and rights should be respected and maintained,
and that the plundering raids and usurpations of the magnates should
be put down. Then the prelates declared him king, and bestowed on
him the royal unction.
For more than half a century, the supreme title of Emperor had
seemed to be bound up with the possession of Italy. Guy therefore
approached Pope Stephen V, with whom he had hitherto been on good
terms, with a demand for the imperial crown. Stephen, however, was
not anxious to add to the power of the house of Spoleto, always a
menace to the papacy. A more distant Emperor seemed to offer a
fairer prospect of safety. He therefore sent a private summons to Arnulf.
But as the latter was unable to leave Germany, Stephen V was compelled
(11 February 891) to proceed to the consecration of Guy as Emperor. His
wife, Ageltrude, was crowned with him, and their son, Lambert, received
the title of king and joint-Emperor. Adalbert of Tuscany now resolved
on making his official submission to the new ruler. Berengar alone
persisted in refusing to recognise him, and maintained his independence
in his old domain, the March of Friuli. He even retained some supporters
outside its limits who objected to Guy's Burgundian origin and reproached
him with the favour which he shewed to certain of his compatriots who
had followed him from beyond the Alps, such as Anscar (Anscarius),
on whom he bestowed the March of Ivrea. Nevertheless the new
Emperor, in the beginning of May 891, held a great placitum at Pavia,
at which, to satisfy the demands of the prelates, he promulgated a long
capitulary enacting the measures necessary to protect church property.
On the same occasion, anxious, no doubt, to secure the support of the
clergy, he made numerous grants to the bishops.
In September Stephen V died. His successor was the Bishop of
Porto, Formosus, an energetic man, but one whose energy had gained
him many enemies. In particular he seems to have been on bad terms
with Guy, and doubtless considered an Italian Emperor a danger to the
0. MED. H. VOL. III. CH. III.
5
## p. 66 (#112) #############################################
66
Arnulf in Italy
Holy See. He therefore made a fresh appeal to Arnulf. The King of
Germany did not come in person, but he sent his illegitimate son,
Zwentibold, to whom he entrusted the task of “restoring order” beyond
the Alps with the assistance of Berengar of Friuli. Zwentibold allowed
himself to be daunted or bribed by Guy, and returned to Germany
without having accomplished anything (893). At the beginning of the
next year (894) Arnulf resolved to make a descent into Italy himself.
He carried Bergamo by assault, and massacred the garrison. Intimidated
by this example, Milan and Pavia opened their gates, and the majority
of the magnates joined in taking the oath of fidelity to Arnulf. The
latter, however, went no further than Piacenza, whence he turned
homewards. But on his way back he found the road barred close to
.
Ivrea by the troops of the Marquess Anscar, swelled by a contingent
sent by Rodolph, King of Burgundy. Arnulf, however, succeeded in
forcing a passage and turned his arms against Rodolph, but without
gaining any advantage, as the enemy took refuge in the mountains.
Zwentibold was placed at the head of a fresh expedition against the
regnum Jurense, but was no more successful.
In a word, the brief irruption of Arnulf into Italy had done nothing
to alter the situation. Guy remained Emperor. But just as he was
about to resume his struggle with Berengar, an attack of haemorrhage
carried him off. His successor was his son Lambert who had already
been his colleague in the government. But Lambert was young and
devoid of energy or authority. Disorder broke out more fiercely than
ever, and in the autumn of 895 Formosus again sent a pressing appeal
to Arnulf. Again the king of Germany set out, and on this occasion
pushed on to Rome. But the population was hostile to șim. The
resistance was organised by Ageltrude, Guy's widow, an energetic
Lombard of Benevento. Arnulf was obliged to carry the city by assault.
In February 896 Formosus crowned him Emperor in the basilica of
St Peter, and a few days later the Romans were compelled to take the
oath of fidelity to him. But his success was to be short-lived. Agel-
trude, who had taken refuge in her duchy of Spoleto, held out there in
the name of Lambert. Just as he was about to lead an expedition
against her, Arnulf fell sick. Thereupon he gave up the struggle and
took the road back to his dominions, where, moreover, other disturbances
called for his presence. Once he had gone, Lambert lost no time in
re-appearing in Pavia, where he again exercised royal power. He also
got possession of Milan in spite of the resistance of Manfred, the count
whom Arnulf had placed there, and again began hostilities with Berengar.
But the two rivals soon agreed upon a treaty, guaranteeing to Berengar
the district north of the Po and east of the Adda.
All the rest of Italy was left to Lambert, who again entered Rome
with Ageltrude in the beginning of 897. Formosus had died on 4 April
896. After the brief pontificate of Boniface VI which lasted only a
## p. 67 (#113) #############################################
The Formosan troubles at Rome
67
fortnight, the Romans had elected Stephen VII. This Pope was a
personal enemy of Formosus and, perhaps in co-operation with Lambert,
undertook to indict his detested predecessor with a horrible travesty
of the forms of law. The corpse of Formosus—if an almost contem-
porary tradition is to be credited—was dragged from its tomb and
clothed in its pontifical vestments and a simulacrum of a judicial
trial was gone through. Accused of having infringed canonical rules
by his translation from Porto to Rome, of having violated an oath
taken to John VIII never to re-enter Rome, and, as a matter of course,
condemned, the dead Pope's body was stripped of its vestments and cast
into the Tiber. All the acts of Formosus, in particular the ordinations
performed by him, were declared null and void. This sinister con-
demnation brought about a revulsion of feeling, although opinion had
been generally somewhat hostile to Formosus. A revolt broke out in
Rome, Stephen VII was made prisoner and strangled; soine months of
confusion followed until finally, the election of John IX (June 898)
restored some measure of quiet. In agreement with Lambert, the new
Pope took steps to pacify opinion. The judgment pronounced against
Formosus was annulled, and the priests who had been deposed as having
been ordained by him were restored. A synod, held at Rome, busied
itself with measures to secure the good government of the Church and
the observance of canonical rule. The prescribed form for the election
of a supreme Pontiff was again laid down; the choice was to be made
'
by the clergy of Rome with the assent of the people and nobles in the
presence of an official delegated by the Emperor. A great assembly
held by Lambert at Ravenna also made provision for the safety of
Church property and for the protection of freemen against the oppres-
sions exercised by the counts. But on 15 October 898 the young king
lost his life through a hunting accident. Lambert left no heir and
Berengar profited by the situation to make himself master of the
kingdom of Italy without striking a blow. By 1 December Ageltrude
herself acknowledged him, receiving from him a deed confirming her in
possession of her property. With the accession of Berengar a new period
begins in the history of Italy, not less disturbed than the preceding one,
but almost entirely unconnected with the Carolingian Empire and the
Kings of Germany.
On his return from Italy in 894 Arnulf was also to find in the
western part of his dominions a situation of considerable difficulty.
At the diet of Worms in 895, resuming a project which the opposition
of his great vassals had forced him to lay aside in the preceding year,
he had caused his son Zwentibold to be proclaimed King of Lorraine.
Zwentibold was a brave and active prince, often entrusted by his father
with the command of military expeditions. Arnulf hoped by this means
to protect Lorraine against possible attempts by the rulers of Burgundy
or of the Western Kingdom, and at the same time to maintain order,
CH. III.
5-2
## p. 68 (#114) #############################################
68
Death of Arnulf
which was often disturbed by the rivalry of two hostile clans who were
contending for mastery in the country, that of Count Reginar, inac-
curately called the “ Long-necked,” and that of Count Matfrid. But
with regard to the latter object, Zwentibold, who was of a violent and
hasty temper, seems to have been but little fitted to play the part of
a pacificator. It was not long before he had given offence to the greater
part of the magnates. At the assembly of Worms (May 897) Arnulf
seemed for a moment to have restored peace between the King of
Lorraine and his counts. But no later than next year disorder broke
out afresh. Reginar, whom Zwentibold was attempting to deprive of
his honours, made an appeal to Charles the Simple, who advanced as far
as the neighbourhood of Aix-la-Chapelle. Thanks to the help of Franco,
the Bishop of Liège, Zwentibold succeeded in organising a resistance
sufficiently formidable to induce Charles to make peace and go
back
to his own kingdom.
The death of Arnulf (November or December 899) heightened the
confusion. He left a son, Louis the Child, born in 893, whose right
to the succession had been acknowledged by the assembly at Tribur
(897). On 4 February 900, an assembly at Forchheim in East Franconia
proclaimed him King of Germany. Some time afterwards in Lorraine
the party of Matfrid, with the support of the bishops who resented the
dissolute life of Zwentibold and the favour shewn by him to persons
of low condition, abandoned their sovereign and appealed to Louis the
Child. Zwentibold was killed in an encounter with the rebels on the
banks of the Meuse (13 August 900). Louis remained until his death
titular King of Lorraine, where he several times made his appearance,
but where feudalism of the strongest type was developing. A few years
later, civil war again broke out between Matfrid's family and the Frankish
Count Gebhard, on whom Louis had conferred the title of Duke and the
government of Lorraine. Nor did affairs proceed much better in the
other parts of the kingdom, to judge by the few and meagre chronicles
of the time. Outside, Louis had no longer the means of making good
any claim upon Italy, where Louis of Provence was contending with
Berengar for the imperial crown. Germany itself was wasted by the
feuds between the rival Franconian houses of the Conradins and Baben-
berg. The head of the latter, Adalbert, in 906 defeated and killed
Conrad the Old, head of the rival family, but being himself made
prisoner by the king's officers, he was accused of high treason and
executed in the same year (9 September). But the most terrible scourge
of Germany was that of the Hungarian invasions. It was in 892 that
the Hungarians, a people of Finnish origin who had been driven from
their settlements between the Don and the Dnieper, made their first
appearance in Germany as the allies of Arnulf in a war against the
Moravians. A few years later they established themselves permanently
on the banks of the Theiss. In 900 a band of them, returning from
## p. 69 (#115) #############################################
Death of Louis the Child
69
a plundering expedition into Italy, made its way into Bavaria, ravaged
the country and carried off a rich booty. The defeat of another band
by the Margrave Liutpold and Bishop Richer of Passau, as well as the
construction of the fortress of Ensburg, intended to serve as a bulwark
against them, were insufficient to keep them in check. Thenceforth not
a year passed without some part of Louis's kingdom being visited by
these bold horsemen, skilled in escaping from the more heavily armed
German troops, before whom they were wont to retreat, galling them as they
went, with Alights of arrows, and at a little distance forming up again
and continuing their ravages. In 901 they devastated Carinthia. In 906
they twice ravaged Saxony. Next year they inflicted a heavy defeat on
the Bavarians, killing the Margrave Liutpold. In 908 it was the turn of
Saxony and Thuringia, in 909 that of Alemannia. On their return,
however, Duke Arnulf the Bad of Bavaria inflicted a reverse upon them
on the Rott, but in 910 they, in their turn, defeated near Augsburg the
numerous army collected by Louis the Child.
It was in the autumn of the following year (911) that the life of this
last representative of the Eastern Carolingians came to an end at the
age of barely eighteen. He was buried in the Church of St Emmeram
at Ratisbon. In the early days of November the Frankish, Saxon,
Alemannian, and Bavarian lords met at Forchheim and elected as king
Conrad, Duke of Franconia, a man of Frankish race, and noble birth,
renowned for his valour. This prince's reign was hardly more fortunate
than that of his predecessor. Three expeditions in succession (912–913)
directed against Charles the Simple did not avail to drive the Western
King out of Lorraine. Rodolph, King of Burgundy, even took advantage
of the opportunity to seize upon Basle. Besides this, the Hungarians,
in spite of their defeat on the Inn at the hands of Duke Arnulf of
Bavaria in 913, continued their ravages in Saxony, Thuringia and
Swabia. In 917 they traversed the whole of the southern part of the
kingdom of Germany, plundered Basle and even penetrated into Alsace.
On the other hand, domestic discords still went on, and the chiefs of the
nascent feudal principalities were in a state of perpetual war either with
one another or with the sovereign. One of the most powerful vassals
about the king, Erchanger, the Count Palatine, had in 913 raised the
standard of revolt. Restored to favour for a short time in consequence
of the energetic help he gave to Duke Arnulf in the struggle with the
Hungarians, he lost no time in giving fresh offence to Conrad by
attacking one of his most influential counsellors, Solomon, Bishop of
Constance, whom he even kept for some days a prisoner. The sentence
of banishment pronounced on him in consequence did not prevent him
from continuing to keep the field with the help of his brother Berthold
and Count Burchard, or from defeating the royal troops next year by
Wahlwies near Lake Constance. To get the better of himn Conrad was
obliged to have him arrested for treason at the assembly of Hohen Altheim
CH. III.
## p. 70 (#116) #############################################
70
Conrad I of Germany
1
in Swabia and executed a few weeks later with his brother Berthold
(21 January 917). But one of the rebels, Count Burchard, succeeded
in maintaining possession of Swabia. . Conrad was hardly more successful
with regard to his other great vassals. One of the most powerful, Henry
of Saxony, gave signs from the very beginning of the reign of a hostile
a
temper' towards the new sovereign which manifested itself in 915 by an
open rebellion, marked by the defeat of the expeditions led against the
rebel by the Margrave Everard, brother of Conrad, and by the king himself.
In Bavaria, Duke Arnulf had also revolted in 914. Temporarily
worsted, and obliged to take refuge with his former foes, the Hungarians,
he had re-appeared next year in his duchy. He was forced to submit
and to surrender Ratisbon, but he took up the struggle afresh a little
later (917) and again became master of the whole of Bavaria.
Conrad and the magnates both lay and ecclesiastical who had
remained loyal to him held a great assembly at Hohen Altheim in 916
“ to strengthen the royal power,” when the severest penalties were
threatened against any who should “conspire against the life of the
king, take part with his adversaries or attempt to deprive him of the
government of the kingdom. ” When Conrad ended his short reign
(23 December 918), recommending the magnates to choose as his successor
his former enemy, Henry of Saxony, he was in a position to testify that
the magnates had seldom done anything else than transgress the precepts
laid down at Hohen Altheim. To split up the realm into great feudal
principalities, handed down from father to son and owning little or no
obedience to a sovereign always in theory elective,-this was the con-
stantly increasing evil from which Germany was to suffer throughout the
whole of the Middle Ages.
The appearance of tribal dukes was not a mere outburst of disorder.
a
Local leaders undertook the defence neglected by the central power, and
,
so duchies, founded upon common race and memories, appeared and grew
apart in reaction against Frankish hegemony. In Saxony, left to itself,
the Liudolfing Bruno headed from 880 the warfare against Danes and
Wends. Bavaria, troubled by Hungarians, found a Duke in Arnulf
c c. 907. Franconia, less harassed and more loyal to the Carolingians,
lacked traditions of unity, but in Conrad, the future king, Conradins
of the west triumphed over Babenberger rivals in the east. In Lorraine,
the Carolingian homeland, even less united, Reginar (a grandson of the
Emperor Lothar I) became Duke. Swabia found, under King Conrad I,
a Duke in Burchard. Thus everywhere, as local unity met local needs,
ducal dynasties arose.
;
।
1 The chroniclers of a later period explain this by relating that Conrad had owed
his crown only to its refusal by Otto, father of Henry, but the fact is doubtful.
th
th
## p. 71 (#117) #############################################
71
CHAPTER IV.
FRANCE, THE LAST CAROLINGIANS AND THE
ACCESSION OF HUGH CAPET. (888-987. )
DESERTED by Charles the Fat, on whom, through a strange illusion,
they had fixed all their hopes, the West-Franks in 887 again found
themselves as much at a loss to choose a king as they had been at the
death of Carloman in 884. The feeling of attachment to the Carolingian
house, whose exclusive right to the throne seemed to have been formerly
hallowed, as it were, by Pope Stephen II, was still so strong, especially
among the clergy, that the problem might well appear almost insoluble.
It was out of the question indeed, to view as a possible sovereign
the young Charles the Simple, the posthumous child of Louis II, the
Stammerer. Even Fulk, Archbishop of Rheims, who was later to be
his most faithful supporter, did not hesitate to admit that “ in the face
of the fearful dangers with which the Normans threatened the kingdom
it would have been imprudent to fix upon him then. ” Nor, at the first
moment, did anyone seem inclined towards Arnulf, illegitimate son of
Carloman and grandson of Louis the German, whom the East-Franks
had recently,ın November 887, put in the place of Charles the Fat.
In this cate of uncertainty, all eyes would naturally turn towards
Odo (Eudo), Count of Paris, whose distinguished conduct when, shortly
before, tá Normans had laid siege to his capital, seemed to mark him
out toil as the man best capable of defending the kingdom. ' Son of
Robe the Strong, Odo, then aged between twenty-five and thirty, had,
bye death of Hugh the Abbot (12 May 886), just entered into pos-
son of the March of Neustria which had been ruled by his father.
jeficiary of the rich abbeys of Saint-Martin of Tours, Cormery,
lleloin and Marmoutier, as well as Count of Anjou, Blois, Tours and
aris, and heir to the preponderating influence which Hugh the Abbot
ad acquired in the kingdom, in Odo the hour seemed to have brought
orth the man. He was proclaimed king by a strong party, consisting
ainly of Neustrians, and crowned at Compiègne on 29 February 888
, Walter, Archbishop of Sens.
Nevertheless, he was far from having gained the support of all sections.
1 the people of Francia it seemed a hardship to submit to this
cH. Tv.
## p. 72 (#118) #############################################
72
Accession of Odo
a
a
Neustrian, “a stranger to the royal race," whose interests differed widely
from theirs.
themselves to these lords, and in their turn become vassals. This
process was at first encouraged by the sovereign, as facilitating the
assembling of the host when necessary, and this it is which explains the
provisions in the capitulary of 847 ordering every free man to choose
himself a lord, the latter being charged with the office of leading his
men to war. But an important transformation had besides taken place
in the host. The infantry, which in the eighth century had formed the
chief strength of the Frankish armies, had given way to cavalry. By
the end of the ninth century, the Carolingian armies are almost wholly
composed of horse-soldiers. But the mounted warrior cannot be a mere
free man, for in order to maintain his steed and his handful of followers
he must hold some land or benefice from his lord. He has become the
knight, the miles, the last rank in the feudal hierarchy. Counts and
knights, however, when summoned by the king, shew no great eagerness
to respond to the appeal. Constantly the attempts made by Charles to
resist the Northmen are brought to nothing by the refusal of his vassals
to follow him. Even when the Frankish force is under arms, it is only a
sort of landwehr or militia, ill-adapted for fighting. The civilised Franks
have lost the warlike qualities of their half-barbarous forefathers. It is
not with such materials that a king or any other leader could expect to
succeed against the bands of the Scandinavians who were trained to
warfare and made it their habitual occupation.
## p. 55 (#101) #############################################
55
CHAPTER III.
THE CAROLINGIAN KINGDOMS (877-918).
The death of Charles the Bald did not ensure the triumph of Carlo-
man, who was soon forced by an epidemic which broke out in his army
to make the best of his way back to Germany. It seemed, however,
as if it would be the signal for renewed civil discord in Gaul. When Louis
the Stammerer received news at Orville near Laon of the pitiable end of
his father, he hastened, without the assent of the magnates, to distribute
to such of his partisans as happened to be around him, “honours,"
counties, estates and abbeys, thus violating an engagement made at
Quierzy. Accordingly, when he was about to go into Francia to receive
the oath of fidelity from his new subjects, he learned that the magnates,
rallying round Boso and the Abbot Hugh, and supported by the
widowed Empress Richilda, refused him obedience, and, as a sign of
their displeasure, were ravaging the country. Nevertheless, thanks,
no doubt, to the mediation of Hincmar, and after some time had been
spent in arranging terms, the rebels agreed to a settlement. Richilda
was reconciled to her step-son, handing over to him the royal insignia
and the deed by which Charles the Bald before his death had nominated
his heir. The magnates, whose rights the king promised to recognise,
all made their submission. The Abbot Hugh even became one of the
most influential counsellors of Louis the Stammerer. On 8 December,
after having sternly exhorted the new sovereign to respect the rights
of his vassals, Hincmar crowned him King of the West-Franks in the
church of Compiègne.
Louis, however, was not the man to carry out his father's imperialist
policy, in spite of the opportunity which occurred for it the next year.
Anarchy set in more fiercely than ever in Italy. Carloman had obtained
from his brothers the cession of their rights over the peninsula, in
exchange for those which he possessed over Lorraine in virtue of a
partition treaty concluded the year before (877), but he was in no
plight to attempt another expedition. Lambert, Duke of Spoleto,
and his brother-in-law Adalbert, Duke or Marquess of Tuscany, were
making open war upon John VIII, and plainly intended to bring back
сн. ПІ,
## p. 56 (#102) #############################################
56
Death of Louis the Stammerer
to Rome the political opponents whom the Pope had formerly expelled,
particularly the celebrated Formosus, Bishop of Porto. So John VIII
decided upon another attempt to make the Western Kingdom his ally.
After having bought a peace from the Saracens, who were still a menace
to the Papal States, he embarked on a Neapolitan vessel and landed at
Arles, where Boso, who had returned to his former duchy, and his wife
Ermengarde, welcomed him with assurances of devotion and in company
with him ascended the Rhone as far as Lyons. After somewhat laborious
negotiations with Louis the Stammerer, a council presided over by the
Pope met at Troyes, at the beginning of autumn. But there were
few practical results attained from the assembly; little was settled,
except a few points relating to discipline, and the confirmation of the
sentence of excommunication against Lambert, Adalbert, and their
supporters. John VIII would have wished to see Louis put himself
at the head of another expedition against the enemies of the Holy See,
whether rebel counts or Saracens: the king, however, seems not to
have had the least inclination for such a course, and John VIII was
forced to turn to that one among the magnates who, if only by his
connexion with Italy, seemed best fitted to take up the task which the
Carolingians refused to accept, namely Boso. It was in his company
that the Pope re-crossed the Alps, at the end of the year, calling a
great meeting of the bishops and lay lords of Northern Italy to assemble
at Pavia. In a letter which he addressed at this time to Engilberga,
widow of Louis II, he anticipated for her son-in-law the most brilliant
prospects. Ermengarde's husband might look forward to the Lombard
crown, perhaps even to the imperial one. But Boso himself did nothing
to forward the ambitious views of the Pontiff on his behalf. At Pavia,
under one pretext or another, he quitted John VIII and made his way
back to Gaul.
Louis the Stammerer, who had concluded a treaty at Fouron' with
his cousins of Germany for the partition of Louis II's inheritance, and
being free from anxiety in that quarter, had just resolved upon an
expedition against Bernard, Marquess of Gothia, who had not made his
submission at the beginning of the reign and still remained contumacious.
But a change came over the situation with the death of King Louis on
10 April 879. The leaders of the party, opposed to the Abbot Hugh
and to the magnates actually in power, made use of the event to appeal
for aid to the foreigner. At the instigation of one of the Welfs,
Conrad, Count of Paris, and of Joscelin, Abbot of Saint-Germain-des-
Prés, Louis of Saxony entered the kingdom from the west to dispute
possession of their father's inheritance with Louis III and Carloman,
the two young sons of Louis the Stammerer. He penetrated as far as
1 Three places in Belgium, in the province of Liège, bear the name of Fouron.
It cannot be positively ascertained at which of them the conferences took place which
led up to the treaty.
## p. 57 (#103) #############################################
Boso, King of Provence
57
a
Verdun, ravaging the country as he went. But those who took up
his cause were few in number. Envoys from the Abbot Hugh, from
Boso, and Theodoric, Count of Autun, who were at the head of affairs
in the Western Kingdom, had no great difficulty in persuading the king
of Germany to abandon his enterprise in return for a promise of the
cession of that part of Lorraine which by the Treaty of Meersen fell
to the share of Charles the Bald. In the month of September the
coronation of the two sons of Louis the Stammerer by his marriage
with Ansgarde, took place quietly at Ferrières. But Ansgarde had
been afterwards repudiated by her husband, who had taken a second
wife named Adelaide, the mother of his son Charles the Simple. The
legitimacy of Louis III and Carloman was not universally admitted,
discontent still existed, and before the end of 879 the Frankish kingdom
was threatened by a new danger. Boso, at the instance of his wife,
Ermengarde, who, by birth the daughter of an emperor, was dissatisfied
with her position as the wife of a duke, took advantage of the weakness
of the kings to re-establish for his own benefit the former kingdom
of Charles of Provence (that is, the counties of Lyons and Vienne with
Provence) and to have himself proclaimed king of it at an assembly of
bishops held at Mantaille, near Vienne. little later he was solemnly
crowned by the Archbishop, Aurelian, at Lyons (autumn of 879).
In the spring of 880 Conrad and Joscelin again called in Louis
of Saxony. This second attempt had no better success than the first,
and Louis was obliged to return to his own dominions after having
. concluded with his cousins the Treaty of Ribemont, which again
confirmed him in possession of the former kingdom of Lothar II. His
tenure of it, however, was somewhat insecure, since the Lyons and
Vienne districts were under Boso's control. The Archbishop of Besançon
appears to have recognised the usurper. In the north, Hugh, an
illegitimate son of Lothar II, had taken up arms and was also en-
deavouring to make himself independent. Confronted with these dangers,
and also with incessant attacks by the Danish pirates, the Carolingian
kings felt the necessity for union. By a treaty agreed to at Amiens
in the beginning of 880, Louis III was to have Francia and Neustria,
Carloman taking Aquitaine and Burgundy, with the task of making head
against Boso. None the less, the two kings were agreed in desiring an
interview at Gondreville with one of their cousins from Germany, and
taking concerted measures against the rebels. It was Charles the Fat,
the ruler of Alemannia, who, on his return from Italy whither he had
gone to secure his proclamation as king by an assembly of magnates
held at Ravenna, met Louis III and Carloman at this last fraternal
colloquium in June 880. The three sovereigns began by joining forces
against Hugh of Lorraine, whose brother-in-law, Count Theobald, was
defeated and compelled to take refuge in Provence. The allies then
directed their efforts against the latter country. The Count of
CH. INI.
## p. 58 (#104) #############################################
58
Charles the Fat in Rome
Mâcon, who adhered to Boso, was forced to surrender, and the Caro-
lingian kings, pursuing their advance without encountering any resistance, ,
laid siege to Vienne where the usurper had fortified himself. The
unlooked for defection of Charles the Fat put a stop to the campaign.
For a long time John VIII, compelled by the desertion of Boso to go
back to the policy of an alliance with Germany, had been demanding
the return of Charles to Italy. Suddenly abandoning the siege, the
king again crossed the Alps in order to go to Rome and there to receive
the imperial crown from the hands of the Pope (February 881) while his
cousins, unable to subdue Boso at once, returned to their dominions,
leaving the task of blockading Vienne to the Duke of Burgundy, Richard
the Justiciar, who was own brother, as it happened, to the rebel king of
Provence. Queen Ermengarde, who was defending the place, was obliged
to surrender a few months later (September 882).
Charles the Fat made no long stay at Rome. As early as February 881
he took the road leading northwards. It is true that the new Emperor
made a fresh expedition into Italy at the end of the same year, though
he got no farther than Ravenna. Here the Pope came to meet him
in order to try and obtain from him measures likely to protect the
patrimony of St Peter from the attacks of the dukes of Spoleto. But
the death of Louis of Saxony (20 January 882) now recalled the Emperor
to Germany. This event made Charles master of the whole Eastern
Kingdom, for Carloman of Bavaria, who by an agreement made in
879 with Louis had secured to the latter his whole inheritance, had
died in 880. Carloman's illegitimate son Arnulf had been by the terms
of the same treaty forced to content himself with the duchy of Carinthia.
Hugh of Lorraine, who still under pretext of claiming his paternal
heritage had again been indulging in acts of brigandage, had been
defeated by Louis some time before his death and constrained to take
refuge in Burgundy.
In the Western Kingdom, Louis III of France had died of a fall
from his horse on 5 August 882. Carloman, summoned from Burgundy,
received the magnates' oaths of fidelity at Quierzy and thus became
the sole sovereign of the Western Kingdom. His brief reign is wholly
taken up with fruitless struggles against the Northmen. On 12 December
884 he also was carried off by an accident while out hunting. Louis
the Stammerer's posthumous son, Charles, known later as the Simple,
was by reason of his youth unfit to reign. Thus the Frankish nobles
appealed to Charles the Fat, in whose hands were thus concentrated
all the kingdoms which had gone to make up the empire of Charles the
Great. But the Emperor, though a man of piety and learning, was very
far from possessing the activity and vigour demanded by a position
now more difficult than ever. For the ravages of the Northmen had re-
doubled in violence during the preceding years. Established permanently
in Flanders, they took advantage of their situation to ravage at once what
## p. 59 (#105) #############################################
The Northmen
59
was formerly Lorraine and the kingdoms of the East and West. A victory
gained over them at Thion on the Sambre by Louis of Saxony in 880,
had led to no results, for in the same year they burnt Nimeguen, while
another band made their way into Saxony. The Abbot Joscelin had in
vain attempted to drive out those on the Scheldt, who from their fortified
camp at Courtrai made perpetual raids for pillage into the Western King-
dom. Nevertheless, King Louis III won over then at Saucourt in Ponthieu
a renowned victory, commemorated by a cantilène, a popular song in cele-
bration of it, in the German language which has come down to us. Yet
it did not hinder the Danes settled at Ghent from reaching the valley of
the Meuse and forming a new entrenched camp at Elsloo. During the
winter of 881-882 they burnt Liège, Tongres, Cologne, Bonn, Stavelot,
Prüm and Aix, and took possession of Trèves. Walo, the Bishop of
Metz, who with Bertulf, Archbishop of Trèves, had put himself at the
head of the defenders, was defeated and killed in April 882. At the
assembly held at Worms (May 882), Charles the Fat, who was returning
from Italy, determined to act with vigour, and gathered a numerous
army at the head of which he placed to second his efforts two tried
warriors, Arnulf of Carinthia, and Henry, Count or Duke of Thuringia.
But on the point of attacking the camp at Elsloo his courage failed.
He fell back on the dangerous method, already too often practised by
the Carolingians, of negotiating with the invaders. Of their leaders
Godefrid (Guðröðr) obtained Frisia as a fief on condition of receiving
baptism, and Sigefrid (Sigröðr) was paid to withdraw.
The chief part of the great Northman army then turned to attack
the Western Kingdom. By the autumn they were ravaging it up to
the gates of Rheims. The aged archbishop, Hincmar, was forced to
leave his metropolitan city and flee for refuge to Epernay, where he died
on 21 December 882. Carloman succeeded in checking the Danes more
than once on the banks of the Aisne and of the Vicogne, but the
invasion was not beaten off. Another fortified camp was formed by
the Northmen at Condé on the Scheldt. The bands which came forth
from it next year seized Amiens, and ravaged the district between the
Seine and the Oise without meeting with resistance. Carloman was
obliged to negotiate with them, and, thanks to the intervention of
Sigefrid, he obtained a pledge that the band in cantonments near
Amiens should evacuate the Western Kingdom in consideration of the
enormous sum of 12,000 pounds of silver (884). The engagement,
moreover, was respected. The main part of the great Northman army
crossed over to England, but other bands passed into the kingdom of
Lorraine, and a party among them settled down behind the woods and
marshes which covered the site of the present town of Louvain.
Such was the position of things at the time when Charles the Fat
became sole ruler of the Frankish Empire and the magnates of France
and Lorraine came to do homage to their new sovereign at Gondreville
CH, 111.
## p. 60 (#106) #############################################
60
Union under Charles the Fat
1
near Toul and Ponthion. The beginning of the reign was marked, besides,
by several victories gained over the Northmen who had penetrated into
Saxony. Other bands were defeated by Count Henry of Alemannia
and Liutbert, Archbishop of Mayence. But Hugh of Lorraine had
decided that the occasion was a good one for again putting forward
his claim to his father's kingdom, with the support of his brother-in-law,
the Northman Godefrid. Count Henry, whose task it was to resist them,
chose to employ treachery. Godefrid was imprudent enough to consent
to an interview in the course of which he was assassinated, and the
Franks succeeded in inflicting a check on his leaderless troops. Hugh,
being allured to Gondreville under pretext of negotiations, also fell into
an ambush. He was blinded, tonsured, and immured in the Abbey
of Prüm. His sister, Gisela, Godefrid's widow, was a little later to
die as Abbess of the Convent of Nivelles. This partial success was,
however, balanced by the defeat suffered in front of Louvain by the
army raised in Lorraine and in the Western Kingdom. Charles seemed
indeed to be losing his interest in this unceasing war. At the assembly
which he held at Frankfort at the beginning of the year 885, his only
care seemed to be to procure the recognition of his illegitimate son
Bernard's right to succeed him. His wishes, however, were opposed
by the magnates. Charles counted on the support of Pope Hadrian III,
the successor of John VIII who had been assassinated in 884, but
Hadrian died 8 July 885, and this event forced the Emperor finally
to give up his project. The successor of the dead Pope, Stephen V,.
had been elected without consulting Charles the Fat, and so much
was the Emperor displeased that he thought it necessary to cross the
Alps yet again. But he lingered in the north of the peninsula while
his confidential agent, the Arch-Chancellor Liutward, Bishop of Vercelli,
went to Rome to negotiate with the Pope. An outbreak of sedition
at Pavia nearly cost the Emperor his life, and he decided not to advance
farther, but to take the road for Gaul once more, whither he was recalled
by the imperious necessity of resisting the Northmen.
Carloman's death had liberated the bands with whom he had treated
at Amiens from their pledge to respect the Western Kingdom. Large
numbers of the Northmen who had crossed over into England came back
during the summer of 885 to rejoin their compatriots at Louvain who,
for their part, had got as far as the mouth of the Seine. Other com-
panies, coming from the Lower Scheldt, joined them there. On 25 July
they entered Rouen, and their feet, three hundred strong, carrying
some forty thousand men, began to push up the Seine. A Neustrian
army which attempted to bar the way to the invaders was obliged to
beat a retreat without having succeeded in defending the fortified bridge
which Charles the Bald had built at Pitres, and the great viking fleet,
reinforced by Danes from the Loire, arrived before Paris on 24 Novem-
ber, covering the river's surface for more than two leagues. The city
## p. 61 (#107) #############################################
Siege of Paris
61
а
of Paris at this time did not extend beyond the island of the Cité.
On
the right bank, however, and especially on the left, lay the suburbs with
their churches and abbeys, Saint-Merri and Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois
to the north, Saint-Germain-des-Prés and Sainte-Geneviève to the south,
with the houses, gardens and vineyards surrounding them.
Of course
no wall enclosed these suburbs. The city itself had been without a ram-
part in the days of Charles the Bald, since the Roman fortifications there
as elsewhere had for long centuries fallen into ruins. Thus the Danes
had on several occasions descended on the town and pillaged it without
let or hindrance. The last of their incursions dated from 866. But
since then Paris had made preparation for resistance. Under the super-
intendence of Odo, the count, son of Robert the Strong, helped by
Bishop Joscelin, the old wall had been rebuilt. Two bridges establishing
communication between the island and both banks of the Seine barred
the way to the viking ships. One Sigefrid, who seems to have been in
command of the expedition, made a demand for himself and his
followers of free access to the upper valley of the Seine. Odo and
Joscelin refused. A general assault next morning was repulsed with loss,
and the Northmen were obliged to undertake a formal siege.
This lasted for long months, varied by attacks upon the bridges and
the works defending them on both banks of the river, and also by
pillaging expeditions into the neighbouring districts. But the Parisians
met the efforts of their assailants with indomitable energy and endurance.
On 16 April 886 Joscelin was carried off by sickness. Odo tried a
sortie in order to seek for reinforcements; it proved successful, and
he made use of his opportunity to send pressing appeals to the Emperor
and his counsellors. He then for the second time traversed the enemy
lines to re-enter the besieged city. Meanwhile, Charles, on his return
from Italy, had held a great assembly at Metz, and had then set out,
at a deliberate rate, to go to the succour of the Parisians. Having
reached Quierzy he sent forward his best warrior Count Henry of
Alemannia, at the head of a detachment of his men. But in attempting
to reconnoitre the enemy's camp, Henry fell, with his horse, into one
of the fosses dug by the besiegers, and was killed (28 August). His
death threw a gloom over his followers, and the relieving detachment
which he had been leading fell back. On 28 October the Emperor came
up in person before Paris, and the inhabitants could see his army on
the heights of Montmartre. But instead of crushing the heathen between
his troops and the city walls, Charles once more began negotiations with
them. Sigefrid consented to raise the siege, in return for a sum of
seven hundred pounds in silver, and permission for his followers to go
and winter in Burgundy, with the right to go up the Seine freely. The
At the end of the ninth century a fairly general movement took place to
restore the walls of cities so as to ensure them against a coup-de-main of the Northman
bands.
>
CH. III.
## p. 62 (#108) #############################################
62
Deposition of Charles the Fat
Parisians, however, refused to agree to this last condition and to allow
the viking vessels to pass under the fortified bridges which they had
defended with so much valour. The Danes were obliged to draw their
boats to land to get them above the city by the river bank, but, none
the less, they reached Burgundy, which they ravaged. Sens, in particular,
stood a siege of six months.
In the meanwhile the Emperor fell sick and returned to Alsace. During
the Easter season he held an assembly at Waiblingen near Stuttgart, at
which was present, among others, Berengar, Marquess of Friuli. From
thence he went to Kirchen in the Breisgau, where he was sought out by
Ermengarde, widow of Boso, with her young son Louis. Boso, in spite
of the capture of Vienne and the efforts of the Carolingian kings and their
lieutenants, had succeeded in maintaining his ground in the kingdom he
had created for himself, and died unsubdued (11 January 887). The son
whom he left, Louis, was still almost a child when his mother brought
him to the Emperor. Charles the Fat received him kindly, recognised his
right to succeed his father, and even went through some kind of ceremony
of adopting him. But the young prince was not long to be benefited
by his protection. The discontent of the magnates with the Emperor,
whom they accused of weakness and incapacity, and with the counsellor
by whom he was chiefly guided, his chancellor Liutward, Bishop of
Vercelli, grew greater every day. Charles endeavoured to placate them
by dismissing his chancellor, but their dissatisfaction still continued
undiminished, and at the end of 887 a revolt broke out, facilitated by
Charles's illness and physical incapacity. The rebels, in an assembly
held at Tribur near Darmstadt, formally deposed the Emperor. He
returned to Neidingen on the Danube near Constance, where he made
a pitiable end on 13 January 888, while his former vassals proclaimed in
his room Arnulf of Carinthia, son of Carloman of Bavaria, of illegitimate
birth, it is true, but well known for his warlike qualities, and, in the
eyes of the magnates, the only prince capable of defending the Empire,
or at least the kingdom of Germany, against the enemies threatening it
on every side.
The deposition of Charles the Fat marks the epoch of the final
dismemberment of the Empire of Charlemagne. Even contemporaries
were conscious of this. “Then,” said the Lotharingian chronicler,
Regino of Prüm, in a justly famous passage, “the kingdoms which had
been subject to the government of Charles split up into fragments,
breaking the bond which united them, and without waiting for their
natural lord, each one sought to create a king of its own, drawn from
within itself; which thing was the cause of long wars, not that there
were lacking Frankish princes worthy of empire by their noble birth,
their courage, and their wisdom, but because their equality in origin,
dignity and power was a fresh cause for discord. None of them in fact
was sufficiently raised above the rest to make them willing to submit
## p. 63 (#109) #############################################
Final division of the Empire
63
to his authority. " The West Franks elected as king Odo, the valiant de-
fender of Paris. In Italy Berengar, Marquess of Friuli, and Guy (Guido),
Duke of Spoleto, contended for the crown. Louis of Provence held the
valley of the Rhone as far as Lyons. Finally, a new claimant, the Welf
Rodolph, son of Conrad, Count of Auxerre, already duke of “the duchy
beyond the Jura” comprising the dioceses of Geneva, Lausanne and Sion,
claimed the ancient kingdom of Lorraine, without, however, succeeding
in building up more than a “ kingdom of Burgundy,” restricted to the
Helvetian pagi and the countries which formed the ancient diocese of
Besançon.
The expressions used by Regino must not, however, be understood
too literally. The kings whom the new nations “ drew from within
themselves were all of the Austrasian race and had their origin in
Francia, their families having been for hardly more than two or three
generations settled in their new counties. The dismemberment, which
began under Louis the Pious and was finally consummated in 888, was
by no means caused by a reaction of the different nations within the
Carolingian Empire against the political and administrative unity im-
posed by Charles the Great. The building up of new nationalities may
have been largely the work of the chances of the various partitions which
had taken place since the Treaty of Verdun. Nevertheless the fact that
Louis the German and his heirs had as their portion the populations
of Teutonic speech, and Charles the Bald and his successors those of the
Romance language, no doubt accentuated such consciousness as these
peoples might have of their individuality, a consciousness further
strengthened by the antagonism between the sovereigns. Italy, on
the other hand, had long been accustomed to live under a king of its
own, a little outside the sphere of the other Frankish kingdoms. Besides
these more remote causes, we must bear in mind the need which each
fraction of the Empire felt of having a protector, an effective head to
organise resistance against the Slavs, the Saracens or the Northmen. A
single Emperor must often be at too great a distance from the point
at which danger threatened. “ The idea of the Empire, the idea of the
Frankish kingdom recedes into the background, and gives place to an
attachment to the more restricted country of one's birth, to the race
to which one belongs? . ” Under the influence of geographical situation
and of language, or even through the chances of political alliances, new
groups had been formed, and each of these placed at its head the man
best fitted to defend it against the innumerable enemies who for half
a century had been devastating all parts of the Empire.
In spite of this separatist movement, the kinglets (reguli) set up in
888 still attributed a certain supremacy to Arnulf as the last representa-
tive of the Carolingian family. Odo sought his presence at Worms in
.
1 G. Monod. Du rôle de l'opposition des races dans la dissolution de l'Empire
carolingien, p. 13.
CH. III.
## p. 64 (#110) #############################################
64
Arnulf
order to place himself under his protection (August 888) before going
to Rheims to receive the crown of Western Francia. At Trent,
Berengar also took up the attitude of a vassal in order to obtain from
Arnulf the recognition of his Italian kingship. Rodolph of Burgundy
yielded to the threat of an expedition to be sent against him, and came
and made his submission at Ratisbon. A little later, at Worms, it was
the turn of young Louis of Provence (894). Doubtless no homage
strictly so called was performed, such as would establish between Arnulf
and the neighbouring sovereigns a relation of positive vassalage with
the reciprocal obligations it entailed. There was, however, a ceremony
analogous to that of homage, and the recognition of a kind of over-
lordship belonging, at any rate in theory, to the King of Germany.
Thus between Arnulf and the rulers of the states which had arisen from
the dismemberment of the Carolingian Empire peace seemed assured.
But it was less safe against enemies from without and against revolts
on the part of the German magnates. Though in 889 Arnulf had
received an embassy from the Northmen bearing pacific messages, the
struggle had begun again in 891. The Danes had invaded Lorraine
and had inflicted on Count Arnulf and Archbishop Sunderold of Mayence
the bloody defeat of La Gueule (26 June) balanced, it is true, by the
success won by King Arnulf in the same year on the banks of the Dyle.
On the other hand, the struggle against the Moravian kingdom founded
by a prince named Svátopluk (Zwentibold) was going on amidst alterna-
tions of success and failure. In 892 Arnulf, with the assistance of the
Slovene duke Braslav, led a successful expedition against the Moravians,
but he had been imprudent enough to call to his aid a troop of Hun-
garians, thus, as it were, pointing out to the Magyar immigrants from
Asia the road into the kingdom of Germany which a few years later
was to have such a fearful experience of them. Two years later (894)
(
the death of Svátopluk led to the recognition of Arnulf's authority
by his two sons, Moimir and Svátopluk II, and the civil war which
before long broke out between them enabled the Franks to intervene
successfully in Moravia. But like Charles the Fat, Arnulf was haunted
by the dream of wearing the imperial crown. At the opening of his
reign the fear of a revolt among the discontented magnates of Swabia
had alone prevented him from responding to the appeals made to him
by Pope Stephen V (890). Events in Italy now offered him the oppor-
tunity of renewing his attempts in that quarter.
The two rivals, Guy and Berengar, who after the deposition of
Charles the Fat disputed for the crown of Italy, were each recognised
as king by a certain number of adherents. A truce had been arranged
between them up to the beginning of the year 889. They used this
respite merely to seek support in foreign countries. Berengar, for twenty
years the faithful ally of the Eastern Carolingians, received reinforcements
from Germany. Guy, after an unsuccessful attempt to secure for himself
## p. 65 (#111) #############################################
Italian Rivals
65
the crown of the Western Kingdom, had recruited contingents in the
district of Burgundy round Dijon, which was his native land. The
Italian lords again took sides with one competitor or the other, with
the exception of the most powerful of them all, Adalbert, Marquess of
Tuscany, who contrived to maintain a prudent neutrality. War then
broke out afresh. A bloody battle—a rare event in the ninth century-
.
in which some 7000 men fought on either side was waged for a whole
day on the banks of the Trebbia. Berengar, thoroughly worsted, was
forced to retreat beyond the Po, where Verona, Cremona and Brescia
still remained faithful to him, and to abandon the struggle with Guy.
The latter seems not to have troubled himself to follow up his enemy's
flight. His victory gave him possession of the palace of Pavia, that is,
of the capital of the Italian kingdom. In the middle of February 889,
he held a great assembly of bishops there, to whom he solemnly promised
that church property and rights should be respected and maintained,
and that the plundering raids and usurpations of the magnates should
be put down. Then the prelates declared him king, and bestowed on
him the royal unction.
For more than half a century, the supreme title of Emperor had
seemed to be bound up with the possession of Italy. Guy therefore
approached Pope Stephen V, with whom he had hitherto been on good
terms, with a demand for the imperial crown. Stephen, however, was
not anxious to add to the power of the house of Spoleto, always a
menace to the papacy. A more distant Emperor seemed to offer a
fairer prospect of safety. He therefore sent a private summons to Arnulf.
But as the latter was unable to leave Germany, Stephen V was compelled
(11 February 891) to proceed to the consecration of Guy as Emperor. His
wife, Ageltrude, was crowned with him, and their son, Lambert, received
the title of king and joint-Emperor. Adalbert of Tuscany now resolved
on making his official submission to the new ruler. Berengar alone
persisted in refusing to recognise him, and maintained his independence
in his old domain, the March of Friuli. He even retained some supporters
outside its limits who objected to Guy's Burgundian origin and reproached
him with the favour which he shewed to certain of his compatriots who
had followed him from beyond the Alps, such as Anscar (Anscarius),
on whom he bestowed the March of Ivrea. Nevertheless the new
Emperor, in the beginning of May 891, held a great placitum at Pavia,
at which, to satisfy the demands of the prelates, he promulgated a long
capitulary enacting the measures necessary to protect church property.
On the same occasion, anxious, no doubt, to secure the support of the
clergy, he made numerous grants to the bishops.
In September Stephen V died. His successor was the Bishop of
Porto, Formosus, an energetic man, but one whose energy had gained
him many enemies. In particular he seems to have been on bad terms
with Guy, and doubtless considered an Italian Emperor a danger to the
0. MED. H. VOL. III. CH. III.
5
## p. 66 (#112) #############################################
66
Arnulf in Italy
Holy See. He therefore made a fresh appeal to Arnulf. The King of
Germany did not come in person, but he sent his illegitimate son,
Zwentibold, to whom he entrusted the task of “restoring order” beyond
the Alps with the assistance of Berengar of Friuli. Zwentibold allowed
himself to be daunted or bribed by Guy, and returned to Germany
without having accomplished anything (893). At the beginning of the
next year (894) Arnulf resolved to make a descent into Italy himself.
He carried Bergamo by assault, and massacred the garrison. Intimidated
by this example, Milan and Pavia opened their gates, and the majority
of the magnates joined in taking the oath of fidelity to Arnulf. The
latter, however, went no further than Piacenza, whence he turned
homewards. But on his way back he found the road barred close to
.
Ivrea by the troops of the Marquess Anscar, swelled by a contingent
sent by Rodolph, King of Burgundy. Arnulf, however, succeeded in
forcing a passage and turned his arms against Rodolph, but without
gaining any advantage, as the enemy took refuge in the mountains.
Zwentibold was placed at the head of a fresh expedition against the
regnum Jurense, but was no more successful.
In a word, the brief irruption of Arnulf into Italy had done nothing
to alter the situation. Guy remained Emperor. But just as he was
about to resume his struggle with Berengar, an attack of haemorrhage
carried him off. His successor was his son Lambert who had already
been his colleague in the government. But Lambert was young and
devoid of energy or authority. Disorder broke out more fiercely than
ever, and in the autumn of 895 Formosus again sent a pressing appeal
to Arnulf. Again the king of Germany set out, and on this occasion
pushed on to Rome. But the population was hostile to șim. The
resistance was organised by Ageltrude, Guy's widow, an energetic
Lombard of Benevento. Arnulf was obliged to carry the city by assault.
In February 896 Formosus crowned him Emperor in the basilica of
St Peter, and a few days later the Romans were compelled to take the
oath of fidelity to him. But his success was to be short-lived. Agel-
trude, who had taken refuge in her duchy of Spoleto, held out there in
the name of Lambert. Just as he was about to lead an expedition
against her, Arnulf fell sick. Thereupon he gave up the struggle and
took the road back to his dominions, where, moreover, other disturbances
called for his presence. Once he had gone, Lambert lost no time in
re-appearing in Pavia, where he again exercised royal power. He also
got possession of Milan in spite of the resistance of Manfred, the count
whom Arnulf had placed there, and again began hostilities with Berengar.
But the two rivals soon agreed upon a treaty, guaranteeing to Berengar
the district north of the Po and east of the Adda.
All the rest of Italy was left to Lambert, who again entered Rome
with Ageltrude in the beginning of 897. Formosus had died on 4 April
896. After the brief pontificate of Boniface VI which lasted only a
## p. 67 (#113) #############################################
The Formosan troubles at Rome
67
fortnight, the Romans had elected Stephen VII. This Pope was a
personal enemy of Formosus and, perhaps in co-operation with Lambert,
undertook to indict his detested predecessor with a horrible travesty
of the forms of law. The corpse of Formosus—if an almost contem-
porary tradition is to be credited—was dragged from its tomb and
clothed in its pontifical vestments and a simulacrum of a judicial
trial was gone through. Accused of having infringed canonical rules
by his translation from Porto to Rome, of having violated an oath
taken to John VIII never to re-enter Rome, and, as a matter of course,
condemned, the dead Pope's body was stripped of its vestments and cast
into the Tiber. All the acts of Formosus, in particular the ordinations
performed by him, were declared null and void. This sinister con-
demnation brought about a revulsion of feeling, although opinion had
been generally somewhat hostile to Formosus. A revolt broke out in
Rome, Stephen VII was made prisoner and strangled; soine months of
confusion followed until finally, the election of John IX (June 898)
restored some measure of quiet. In agreement with Lambert, the new
Pope took steps to pacify opinion. The judgment pronounced against
Formosus was annulled, and the priests who had been deposed as having
been ordained by him were restored. A synod, held at Rome, busied
itself with measures to secure the good government of the Church and
the observance of canonical rule. The prescribed form for the election
of a supreme Pontiff was again laid down; the choice was to be made
'
by the clergy of Rome with the assent of the people and nobles in the
presence of an official delegated by the Emperor. A great assembly
held by Lambert at Ravenna also made provision for the safety of
Church property and for the protection of freemen against the oppres-
sions exercised by the counts. But on 15 October 898 the young king
lost his life through a hunting accident. Lambert left no heir and
Berengar profited by the situation to make himself master of the
kingdom of Italy without striking a blow. By 1 December Ageltrude
herself acknowledged him, receiving from him a deed confirming her in
possession of her property. With the accession of Berengar a new period
begins in the history of Italy, not less disturbed than the preceding one,
but almost entirely unconnected with the Carolingian Empire and the
Kings of Germany.
On his return from Italy in 894 Arnulf was also to find in the
western part of his dominions a situation of considerable difficulty.
At the diet of Worms in 895, resuming a project which the opposition
of his great vassals had forced him to lay aside in the preceding year,
he had caused his son Zwentibold to be proclaimed King of Lorraine.
Zwentibold was a brave and active prince, often entrusted by his father
with the command of military expeditions. Arnulf hoped by this means
to protect Lorraine against possible attempts by the rulers of Burgundy
or of the Western Kingdom, and at the same time to maintain order,
CH. III.
5-2
## p. 68 (#114) #############################################
68
Death of Arnulf
which was often disturbed by the rivalry of two hostile clans who were
contending for mastery in the country, that of Count Reginar, inac-
curately called the “ Long-necked,” and that of Count Matfrid. But
with regard to the latter object, Zwentibold, who was of a violent and
hasty temper, seems to have been but little fitted to play the part of
a pacificator. It was not long before he had given offence to the greater
part of the magnates. At the assembly of Worms (May 897) Arnulf
seemed for a moment to have restored peace between the King of
Lorraine and his counts. But no later than next year disorder broke
out afresh. Reginar, whom Zwentibold was attempting to deprive of
his honours, made an appeal to Charles the Simple, who advanced as far
as the neighbourhood of Aix-la-Chapelle. Thanks to the help of Franco,
the Bishop of Liège, Zwentibold succeeded in organising a resistance
sufficiently formidable to induce Charles to make peace and go
back
to his own kingdom.
The death of Arnulf (November or December 899) heightened the
confusion. He left a son, Louis the Child, born in 893, whose right
to the succession had been acknowledged by the assembly at Tribur
(897). On 4 February 900, an assembly at Forchheim in East Franconia
proclaimed him King of Germany. Some time afterwards in Lorraine
the party of Matfrid, with the support of the bishops who resented the
dissolute life of Zwentibold and the favour shewn by him to persons
of low condition, abandoned their sovereign and appealed to Louis the
Child. Zwentibold was killed in an encounter with the rebels on the
banks of the Meuse (13 August 900). Louis remained until his death
titular King of Lorraine, where he several times made his appearance,
but where feudalism of the strongest type was developing. A few years
later, civil war again broke out between Matfrid's family and the Frankish
Count Gebhard, on whom Louis had conferred the title of Duke and the
government of Lorraine. Nor did affairs proceed much better in the
other parts of the kingdom, to judge by the few and meagre chronicles
of the time. Outside, Louis had no longer the means of making good
any claim upon Italy, where Louis of Provence was contending with
Berengar for the imperial crown. Germany itself was wasted by the
feuds between the rival Franconian houses of the Conradins and Baben-
berg. The head of the latter, Adalbert, in 906 defeated and killed
Conrad the Old, head of the rival family, but being himself made
prisoner by the king's officers, he was accused of high treason and
executed in the same year (9 September). But the most terrible scourge
of Germany was that of the Hungarian invasions. It was in 892 that
the Hungarians, a people of Finnish origin who had been driven from
their settlements between the Don and the Dnieper, made their first
appearance in Germany as the allies of Arnulf in a war against the
Moravians. A few years later they established themselves permanently
on the banks of the Theiss. In 900 a band of them, returning from
## p. 69 (#115) #############################################
Death of Louis the Child
69
a plundering expedition into Italy, made its way into Bavaria, ravaged
the country and carried off a rich booty. The defeat of another band
by the Margrave Liutpold and Bishop Richer of Passau, as well as the
construction of the fortress of Ensburg, intended to serve as a bulwark
against them, were insufficient to keep them in check. Thenceforth not
a year passed without some part of Louis's kingdom being visited by
these bold horsemen, skilled in escaping from the more heavily armed
German troops, before whom they were wont to retreat, galling them as they
went, with Alights of arrows, and at a little distance forming up again
and continuing their ravages. In 901 they devastated Carinthia. In 906
they twice ravaged Saxony. Next year they inflicted a heavy defeat on
the Bavarians, killing the Margrave Liutpold. In 908 it was the turn of
Saxony and Thuringia, in 909 that of Alemannia. On their return,
however, Duke Arnulf the Bad of Bavaria inflicted a reverse upon them
on the Rott, but in 910 they, in their turn, defeated near Augsburg the
numerous army collected by Louis the Child.
It was in the autumn of the following year (911) that the life of this
last representative of the Eastern Carolingians came to an end at the
age of barely eighteen. He was buried in the Church of St Emmeram
at Ratisbon. In the early days of November the Frankish, Saxon,
Alemannian, and Bavarian lords met at Forchheim and elected as king
Conrad, Duke of Franconia, a man of Frankish race, and noble birth,
renowned for his valour. This prince's reign was hardly more fortunate
than that of his predecessor. Three expeditions in succession (912–913)
directed against Charles the Simple did not avail to drive the Western
King out of Lorraine. Rodolph, King of Burgundy, even took advantage
of the opportunity to seize upon Basle. Besides this, the Hungarians,
in spite of their defeat on the Inn at the hands of Duke Arnulf of
Bavaria in 913, continued their ravages in Saxony, Thuringia and
Swabia. In 917 they traversed the whole of the southern part of the
kingdom of Germany, plundered Basle and even penetrated into Alsace.
On the other hand, domestic discords still went on, and the chiefs of the
nascent feudal principalities were in a state of perpetual war either with
one another or with the sovereign. One of the most powerful vassals
about the king, Erchanger, the Count Palatine, had in 913 raised the
standard of revolt. Restored to favour for a short time in consequence
of the energetic help he gave to Duke Arnulf in the struggle with the
Hungarians, he lost no time in giving fresh offence to Conrad by
attacking one of his most influential counsellors, Solomon, Bishop of
Constance, whom he even kept for some days a prisoner. The sentence
of banishment pronounced on him in consequence did not prevent him
from continuing to keep the field with the help of his brother Berthold
and Count Burchard, or from defeating the royal troops next year by
Wahlwies near Lake Constance. To get the better of himn Conrad was
obliged to have him arrested for treason at the assembly of Hohen Altheim
CH. III.
## p. 70 (#116) #############################################
70
Conrad I of Germany
1
in Swabia and executed a few weeks later with his brother Berthold
(21 January 917). But one of the rebels, Count Burchard, succeeded
in maintaining possession of Swabia. . Conrad was hardly more successful
with regard to his other great vassals. One of the most powerful, Henry
of Saxony, gave signs from the very beginning of the reign of a hostile
a
temper' towards the new sovereign which manifested itself in 915 by an
open rebellion, marked by the defeat of the expeditions led against the
rebel by the Margrave Everard, brother of Conrad, and by the king himself.
In Bavaria, Duke Arnulf had also revolted in 914. Temporarily
worsted, and obliged to take refuge with his former foes, the Hungarians,
he had re-appeared next year in his duchy. He was forced to submit
and to surrender Ratisbon, but he took up the struggle afresh a little
later (917) and again became master of the whole of Bavaria.
Conrad and the magnates both lay and ecclesiastical who had
remained loyal to him held a great assembly at Hohen Altheim in 916
“ to strengthen the royal power,” when the severest penalties were
threatened against any who should “conspire against the life of the
king, take part with his adversaries or attempt to deprive him of the
government of the kingdom. ” When Conrad ended his short reign
(23 December 918), recommending the magnates to choose as his successor
his former enemy, Henry of Saxony, he was in a position to testify that
the magnates had seldom done anything else than transgress the precepts
laid down at Hohen Altheim. To split up the realm into great feudal
principalities, handed down from father to son and owning little or no
obedience to a sovereign always in theory elective,-this was the con-
stantly increasing evil from which Germany was to suffer throughout the
whole of the Middle Ages.
The appearance of tribal dukes was not a mere outburst of disorder.
a
Local leaders undertook the defence neglected by the central power, and
,
so duchies, founded upon common race and memories, appeared and grew
apart in reaction against Frankish hegemony. In Saxony, left to itself,
the Liudolfing Bruno headed from 880 the warfare against Danes and
Wends. Bavaria, troubled by Hungarians, found a Duke in Arnulf
c c. 907. Franconia, less harassed and more loyal to the Carolingians,
lacked traditions of unity, but in Conrad, the future king, Conradins
of the west triumphed over Babenberger rivals in the east. In Lorraine,
the Carolingian homeland, even less united, Reginar (a grandson of the
Emperor Lothar I) became Duke. Swabia found, under King Conrad I,
a Duke in Burchard. Thus everywhere, as local unity met local needs,
ducal dynasties arose.
;
।
1 The chroniclers of a later period explain this by relating that Conrad had owed
his crown only to its refusal by Otto, father of Henry, but the fact is doubtful.
th
th
## p. 71 (#117) #############################################
71
CHAPTER IV.
FRANCE, THE LAST CAROLINGIANS AND THE
ACCESSION OF HUGH CAPET. (888-987. )
DESERTED by Charles the Fat, on whom, through a strange illusion,
they had fixed all their hopes, the West-Franks in 887 again found
themselves as much at a loss to choose a king as they had been at the
death of Carloman in 884. The feeling of attachment to the Carolingian
house, whose exclusive right to the throne seemed to have been formerly
hallowed, as it were, by Pope Stephen II, was still so strong, especially
among the clergy, that the problem might well appear almost insoluble.
It was out of the question indeed, to view as a possible sovereign
the young Charles the Simple, the posthumous child of Louis II, the
Stammerer. Even Fulk, Archbishop of Rheims, who was later to be
his most faithful supporter, did not hesitate to admit that “ in the face
of the fearful dangers with which the Normans threatened the kingdom
it would have been imprudent to fix upon him then. ” Nor, at the first
moment, did anyone seem inclined towards Arnulf, illegitimate son of
Carloman and grandson of Louis the German, whom the East-Franks
had recently,ın November 887, put in the place of Charles the Fat.
In this cate of uncertainty, all eyes would naturally turn towards
Odo (Eudo), Count of Paris, whose distinguished conduct when, shortly
before, tá Normans had laid siege to his capital, seemed to mark him
out toil as the man best capable of defending the kingdom. ' Son of
Robe the Strong, Odo, then aged between twenty-five and thirty, had,
bye death of Hugh the Abbot (12 May 886), just entered into pos-
son of the March of Neustria which had been ruled by his father.
jeficiary of the rich abbeys of Saint-Martin of Tours, Cormery,
lleloin and Marmoutier, as well as Count of Anjou, Blois, Tours and
aris, and heir to the preponderating influence which Hugh the Abbot
ad acquired in the kingdom, in Odo the hour seemed to have brought
orth the man. He was proclaimed king by a strong party, consisting
ainly of Neustrians, and crowned at Compiègne on 29 February 888
, Walter, Archbishop of Sens.
Nevertheless, he was far from having gained the support of all sections.
1 the people of Francia it seemed a hardship to submit to this
cH. Tv.
## p. 72 (#118) #############################################
72
Accession of Odo
a
a
Neustrian, “a stranger to the royal race," whose interests differed widely
from theirs.
