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legitimate birth, and by 887 the royal house was represented by one solitary male heir, and he a boy of only eight years old. Meanwhile the Danes had returned from England in full force, and the whole empire of these short-lived kings was enduring the worst crisis that had yet fallen upon it.

Charles the Bald was succeeded in Neustria and Aquitaine, or France, as we may now call the Western realm, by his son Lewis II., better known as Lewis the Stammerer. The new king was a prudent and circumspect ruler, very unlike his flighty parent. He at once gave up all pretension to the kingdom of Italy and the imperial crown, though John VIII. urged

Reign and death of

Lewis the Stammerer, 877-879.

him to reassert his father's claims. He promptly made peace with his German cousins, renewing with them the terms of the Treaty of Mersen, by which eastern Lotharingia fell to Germany and western Lotharingia to France. He then took the field against the Danes, who had just returned once more to the mouth of the Loire, but while engaged with them he was stricken down by disease, and died a few months later, long before he had completed the second year of his reign (879). He left two sons, Lewis and Carloman, and a third child was born to him just after his death, and christened Charles. The counts and bishops of France, following the invariable and unhappy custom of the times, crowned both Lewis and Carloman as kings. The two lads-they were but seventeen and sixteen -were not to enjoy a quiet heritage. Alfred had just expelled from England those of the Danish 'Great Army' who had refused to settle down in the Danelagh and do him homage. The swarm of Vikings fell on Flanders, and burnt Ghent and St. Omer before the young kings' reign was two months old. At the same time Lewis of Saxony, and Carloman, on whom the spirit of greed that had possessed Charles the Bald seemed now to have descended, invaded Neustria-summoned, it would appear, by some disloyal counts. But the West Franks rallied around their young masters, and Lewis the Saxon consented to retire on condition

Accession of
Lewis III.

879.

that Western Lotharingia-the lands that Charles the Bald had acquired by the Treaty of Mersen ten years beforeshould be ceded to him. So Liége, Namur, Cambrai, and Tongern became for the moment German and not French. In another part of the West Frankish realm an equally serious loss was at the same time taking place. Since the death of the good emperor Lewis II. Provence and southern Burgundy had been united to Neustria (875-79). But Lewis' only daughter, the princess Hermengarde, had now found a strong and ambitious husband in Boso, count of Vienne, one of the governors of Burgundy. Taking advantage of the crisis in Neustria, this count Boso resolved to assert his wife's claim to her father's heritage. In Italy he failed to win success, though the Pope would gladly have helped him, but in Provence and Lower Burgundy the nobles rallied to his standard. He was proclaimed king in October 879, and afterwards crowned at Lyons. His new realm of Arles, Boso made Provence, or Lower Burgundy-for it is found king of Arles, styled by all these names-was the first fraction

879.

of the empire of Charles the Great to pass away from the male heirs of the great royal line. Boso's dominions nearly coincided in size with the kingdom of Provence as it had been held by Charles the son of the emperor Lothair 1. They included the whole valley of the Rhone, from Lyons to the sea and the borders of Italy.

While the West Frankish kingdom was being cut short to north and south, Germany was on the whole in better condition. The three sons of Lewis the German, unlike most royal brothers of the time, dwelt together in harmony. The two elder brothers had come to an agreement that Carloman should prosecute his fortunes in Italy, while Lewis sought to aggrandise himself in Lotharingia. But Carloman, after driving Charles the Bald out of Lombardy, and mastering most of the land north of the Po, was stricken down with a fever which terminated in a paralytic stroke. He was carried back to Bavaria, and survived for two years, but never rose from

his couch again. Feeling the hand of death upon him, he handed over the administration of his realm to his brother Lewis, only stipulating that the frontier duchy of Carinthia should be given to his own illegitimate son Arnulf, the child of a Slavonic princess whom he had taken as his concubine. Carloman lived out another year, and died in 880 before he had passed the limits of middle age.

Meanwhile, his place in Italy had been taken by his shiftless younger brother, the king of Suabia. Charles the Fat entered Italy in the autumn of 879, was every

Charles the

Fat, king of
Italy, 879.

where recognised as king, and solemnly received the Lombard crown from John VIII. at Ravenna. But his new kingdom saw little of him: though he was earnestly besought to oppose the Saracen invaders of the south he did nothing of the kind, but went ingloriously home to Suabia.

The Danes were by this time mustering in greater strength than ever for an assault on the Frankish empire. They had gathered together from all the shores of the West, and this time threw themselves on the Eastern realm, not on their old prey in Neustria. The year 880 was long remembered by the Germans for the awful defeat suffered on the Lüneburg Great Danish Heath near Hamburg by the levies of Saxony and Invasion, 880. Thuringia. Bruno, duke of Saxony, two bishops, with no less than twelve counts, were left dead upon the field, and the victorious Vikings ravaged the whole valley of the Elbe without further resistance. Almost at the same moment another Danish army appeared in Austrasia, fought an indecisive battle with king Lewis, and though they left him the field were able to establish themselves permanently on the Scheldt, at a great camp near Courtray, threatening Neustria and Austrasia alike.

In the spring of 881 they made up their minds that the Western realm should first be their spoil. Marching on Beauvais, they met at Saucourt the young king of France and his levies. To the joy and surprise of all Western Christendom

Lewis III. inflicted a crushing defeat on the invaders, slew 8000 of them, and chased them as far as Cambrai, Battle of beyond the borders of his own kingdom.

This Saucourt, 881.

was the only pitched battle of first-rate importance that the Franks had won over the Vikings, and great hopes were entertained that in Lewis III. Europe might find a saviour from the sword of the pagans. But ere a year was out the gallant young king met his death in a foolish frolic,1 and left the Neustrian throne to his brother Carloman.

The Danish army which had been defeated at Saucourt retired to Ghent, where it was strengthened by newly arrived bands under two famous sea-kings, Siegfred and Godfred. Then the host threw itself on Austrasia as the autumn was closing. The levies of the old royal land of the Franks were beaten their king, Lewis of Saxony, was far away, and the winter months of 881-2 saw the whole countryside harried, from the Scheldt-mouth to the Eifel. The inland parts of Austrasia had hitherto been exceptionally fortunate in escaping the Danish sword, but in this fatal winter Liége, Maestricht, Tongern, Köln, Bonn, Neuss, harried by Zulpich, Malmédy, Nimuegen, and every other town in the district was pillaged. Most heartrending of all was the sacking of the royal city of Aachen: the Danes plundered the palace, stabled their horses in the cathedral, and broke the shrine and image above the tomb of Charles the Great.

Austrasia

the Danes.

To the despair of all Germany, king Lewis the Saxon, whose task it should have been to attack the invaders in the next spring, died on January 20th, 882-the fourth Carolingian monarch who had been carried to the grave within three

1 Lewis was a sprightly youth and given to affairs of love, and it chanced one day that in sport he chased a certain damsel, the daughter of Germund. She fled in at her father's gate, and the king followed her, laughing. But he forgot to stoop sufficiently at the portal, and was crushed between the roof and the high pommel of his saddle, so that he died within a few days.'

years. His subjects found nothing better to do than to elect his only surviving brother, Charles the Fat, the king of Suabia and of Italy, as his successor.

Thus began the unhappy reign of Charles, the last Carolingian emperor of the full blood. He was at this moment in Italy, where he had been visiting Rome and receiving the imperial crown. Making a leisurely journey homeward,—the

Charles the
Fat, king of
Germany.

Danes were meanwhile sacking Trier and Metz,— he reached the Rhine in July, and summoned to him the levies of Saxony, Suabia, Bavaria and Franconia: he had brought a Lombard army in his train. With this great host, the largest that had been seen since the death of Charles the Great, he moved against the Danes. Godfred and Siegfred retired before him to a great camp which they had built at Elsloo on the Meuse. The fainthearted emperor faced them for twelve days, and then instead of ordering his vast army to assault the camp, began to negotiate with the enemy. A few days later his soldiery heard to their dismay and disgust, that Charles had consented to allow the Vikings to withdraw with all their plunder, to pay them 2000 lbs. of silver, and to grant king Godfred a great duchy by the Rhine-mouth, with the hand of his cousin Gisela, an illegitimate daughter of king Lothair II. In return the Dane consented to be baptized and to do homage to the emperor. This expedient for buying off Godfred was probably suggested by the way in which Alfred of England had dealt with Guthrum four years before at the peace of Wedmore. Unfortunately Charles forgot that Elsloo, 882. while Alfred was strong enough to compel Guthrum to keep faith, his own character was hardly likely to have a similar influence on Godfred.

Treaty of

King Siegfred, with those of the Danes who did not wish to settle down by the Rhine-mouth, took their way from Elsloo into Neustria. Charles the Fat had merely stipulated for the evacuation of his own kingdom, and cared nought for what might happen to his cousin Carloman. The winter

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