The Emperors Of The Carolingian Line

(814--911.)



Character of Ludwig the Pious. --His Subjection to the Priests.

--Injury to German Literature. --Division of the Empire.

--Treatment of his Nephew, Bernard. --Ludwig's Remorse. --The

Empress Judith and her Son. --Revolt of Ludwig's Sons. --His

Abdication and Death. --Compact of Karl the Bald and Ludwig the

German. --The French and German Languages. --The Low-German.
< r /> --Lothar's Resistance. --The Partition of Verdun. --Germany and

France separated. --The Norsemen. --Internal Troubles. --Ludwig the

German's Sons. --His Death. --Division of Germany. --Karl the Fat.

--His Cowardice. --The Empire restored. --Karl's Death. --Duke

Arnulf made King. --He defeats the Norsemen and Bohemians. --His

Favors to the Church. --The "Isidorian Decretals." --Arnulf Crowned

Emperor. --His Death. --Ludwig the Child. --Invasions of the

Magyars. --End of the Carolingian line in Germany.





[Sidenote: 814. LUDWIG THE PIOUS.]



The last act of Charlemagne's life in ordering the manner of his son's

coronation,--which was imitated, a thousand years afterwards, by

Napoleon, who, in the presence of the Pope, Pius VII., himself set the

crown upon his own head--showed that he designed keeping the Imperial

power independent of that of the Church. But his son, Ludwig, was

already a submissive and willing dependent of Rome. During his reign as

king of Aquitaine he had covered the land with monasteries: he was the

pupil of monks, and his own inclination was for a monastic life. But at

Charlemagne's death he was the only legitimate heir to the throne. Being

therefore obliged to wear the Imperial purple, he exercised his

sovereignty chiefly in the interest of the Church. His first act was to

send to the Pope the treasures amassed by his father; his next, to

surround himself with prelates and priests, who soon learned to control

his policy. He was called "Ludwig the Pious," but in those days, when so

many worldly qualities were necessary to the ruler of the Empire, the

title was hardly one of praise. He appears to have been of a kindly

nature, and many of his acts show that he meant to be just; the

weakness of his character, however, too often made his good intentions

of no avail.



[Sidenote: 816.]



It was a great misfortune for Germany that Ludwig's piety took the form

of hostility to all learning except of a theological nature. So far as



he was able, he undid the great work of education commenced by

Charlemagne. The schools were given entirely into the hands of the

priests, and the character of the instruction was changed. He inflicted

an irreparable loss on all after ages by destroying the collection of

songs, ballads and legends of the German people, which Charlemagne had

taken such pains to gather and preserve. It is not believed that a

single copy escaped destruction, although some scholars suppose that a

fragment of the "Song of Hildebrand," written in the eighth century, may

have formed part of the collection. In the year 816, Ludwig was visited

in Rheims by the Pope, Stephen IV., who again crowned him Emperor in the

Cathedral, and thus restored the spiritual authority which Charlemagne

had tried to set aside. Ludwig's attempts to release the estates

belonging to the Bishops, monasteries and priesthood from the payment of

taxes, and the obligation to furnish soldiers in case of war, created so

much dissatisfaction among the nobles and people, that, at a diet held

the following year, he was summoned to divide the government of the

Empire among his three sons. He resisted at first, but was finally

forced to consent: his eldest son, Lothar, was crowned as Co-Emperor of

the Franks, Ludwig as king of Bavaria, and Pippin, his third son, as

king of Aquitaine.



In this division no notice was taken of Bernard, king of Lombardy, also

a grandson of Charlemagne. The latter at once entered into a conspiracy

with certain Frank nobles, to have his rights recognized; but, while

preparing for war, he was induced, under promises of his personal

safety, to visit the Emperor's court. There, after having revealed the

names of his fellow-conspirators, he was treacherously arrested, and his

eyes put out; in consequence of which treatment he died. The Empress,

Irmingarde, died soon afterwards, and Ludwig was so overcome both by

grief for her loss and remorse for having caused the death of his

nephew, that he was with great difficulty restrained from abdicating and

retiring into a monastery. It was not in the interest of the priesthood

to lose so powerful a friend, and they finally persuaded him to marry

again.



[Sidenote: 822. LUDWIG'S PENITENCE.]



His second wife was Judith, daughter of Welf, a Bavarian count, to whom

he was united in 819. Although this gave him another son, Karl,

afterwards known as Karl (Charles) the Bald, he appears to have found

very little peace of mind. At a diet held in 822, at Attigny, in France,

he appeared publicly in the sackcloth and ashes of a repentant sinner,

and made open confession of his misdeeds. This act showed his sincerity

as a man, but in those days it must have greatly diminished the

reverence which the people felt for him as their Emperor. The next year

his son Lothar, who, after Bernard's death, became also King of

Lombardy, visited Rome and was recrowned by the Pope. For a while,

Lothar made himself very popular by seeking out and correcting abuses in

the administration of the laws.



During the first fifteen years of Ludwig's reign, the boundaries of the

Empire were constantly disturbed by invasions of the Danes, the Slavonic

tribes in Prussia, and the Saracens in Spain, while the Basques and

Bretons became turbulent within the realm. All these revolts or

invasions were suppressed; the eastern frontier was not only held but

extended, and the military power of the Frank Empire was everywhere

recognized and feared. The Saxons and Frisians, who had been treated

with great mildness by Ludwig, gave no further trouble; in fact, the

whole population of the Empire became peaceable and orderly in

proportion as the higher civilization encouraged by Charlemagne was

developed among them.



The remainder of Ludwig's reign might have been untroubled, but for a

family difficulty. The Empress Judith demanded that her son, Karl,

should also have a kingdom, like his three step-brothers. An Imperial

Diet was therefore called together at Worms, in 829, and, in spite of

fierce opposition, a new kingdom was formed out of parts of Burgundy,

Switzerland and Suabia. The three sons, Lothar, Pippin and Ludwig,

acquiesced at first; but when a Spanish count, Bernard, was appointed

regent during Karl's minority, the two former began secretly to conspire

against their father. They took him captive in France, and endeavored,

but in vain, to force him to retire into a monastery. The sympathies of

the people were with him, and by their help he was able, the following

year, to regain his authority, and force his sons to submit.



[Sidenote: 833.]



Ludwig, however, manifested his preference for his last son, Karl, so

openly that in 833 his three other sons united against him, and a war

ensued which lasted nearly five years. Finally, when the two armies

stood face to face, on a plain near Colmar, in Alsatia, and a bloody

battle between father and sons seemed imminent, the Pope, Gregory IV.,



suddenly made his appearance. He offered his services as a mediator,

went to and fro, and at last treacherously carried all the Emperor's

chief supporters over to the camp of the sons. Ludwig, then sixty years

old and broken in strength and spirit, was forced to surrender. The

people gave the name of "The Field of Lies" to the scene of this event.



The old Emperor was compelled by his sons to give up his sword, to

appear as a penitent in Church, and to undergo such other degradations,

that the sympathies of the people were again aroused in his favor. They

rallied to his support from all sides: his authority was restored,

Lothar, the leader of the rebellion, fled to Italy, Pippin had died

shortly before, and Ludwig proffered his submission. The old man now had

a prospect of quiet; but the machinations of the Empress Judith on

behalf of her son, Karl, disturbed his last years. His son Ludwig was

marching against him for the second time, when he died, in 840, on an

island in the Rhine, near Ingelheim.



The death of Ludwig the Pious was the signal for a succession of

fratricidal wars. His youngest son, Karl the Bald, first united his

interests with those of his eldest step-brother, Lothar, but he soon

went over to Ludwig's side, while Lothar allied himself with the sons of

Pippin, in Aquitaine. A terrific battle was fought near Auxerre, in

France, in the summer of 841. Lothar was defeated, and Ludwig and Karl

then determined to divide the Empire between them. The following winter

they came together, with their nobles and armies, near Strasburg, and

vowed to keep faith with each other thenceforth. The language of France

and Germany, even among the descendants of the original Franks, was no

longer the same, and the oath which was drawn up for the occasion was

pronounced by Karl in German to the army of Ludwig, and by Ludwig in

French to the army of Karl. The text of it has been preserved, and it is

a very interesting illustration of the two languages, as they were

spoken a thousand years ago. We will quote the opening phrases:



LUDWIG (French). Pro Deo amur et (pro) Christian poblo

KARL (German). In Godes minna ind (in thes) Christianes folches

English. In God's love and (that of the) Christian folk



LUDWIG. et nostro comun salvament,-- dist di in avant,

KARL. ind unser bedhero gehaltnissi,--fon thesemo dage framordes,

English. and our mutual preservation,--from this day forth,



LUDWIG. -- in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, &c.

KARL. -- so fram so mir God gewiczi ind mahd furgibit, &c.

English. --as long as to me God knowledge and might gives, &c.




A. D. 843.)]



[Sidenote: 843.]



It is very easy to see, from this slight specimen, how much the language

of the Franks had been modified by the Gallic-Latin, and how much of the

original tongue (taking the Gothic Bible of Ulfila as an evidence of its

character) has been retained in German and English. About the same time

there was written in the Low-German, or Saxon dialect, a Gospel

narrative in verse, called the Heliand ("Saviour"), many lines of

which are almost identical with early English; as the following:



Slogun cald isarn

They drove cold iron



hardo mit hamuron

hard with hammers



thuru is hendi enti thuru is fuoti;

through his hands and through his feet;



is blod ran an ertha.

his blood ran on earth.



This separation of the languages is a sign of the difference in national

character which now split asunder the great empire of Charlemagne.

Lothar, after the solemn alliance between Karl the Bald and Ludwig,

resorted to desperate measures. He offered to give the Saxons their old

laws and even to allow them to return to their pagan faith, if they

would support his claims; he invited the Norsemen to Belgium and

Northern France; and, by retreating towards Italy when his brothers

approached him in force, and then returning when an opportunity favored,

he disturbed and wasted the best portions of the Empire. Finally the

Bishops intervened, and after a long time spent in negotiations, the

three rival brothers met in 843, and agreed to the famous "Partition of

Verdun" (so called from Verdun, near Metz, where it was signed), by

which the realm of Charlemagne was divided among them.



[Sidenote: 843. SEPARATION OF GERMANY AND FRANCE.]



Lothar, as the eldest, received Italy, together with a long, narrow

strip of territory extending to the North Sea, including part of

Burgundy, Switzerland, Eastern Belgium and Holland. All west of this,

embracing the greater part of France, was given to Karl the Bald; all

east, with a strip of territory west of the Rhine, from Basle to

Mayence, "for the sake of its wine," as the document stated, became the

kingdom of Ludwig, who was thenceforth called "The German." The

last-named also received Eastern Switzerland and Bavaria, to the Alps.

This division was almost as arbitrary and unnatural as that which Pippin

the Short attempted to make. Neither Karl's nor Ludwig's shares included

all the French or German territory; while Lothar's was a long, narrow

slice cut out of both, and attached to Italy, where a new race and

language were already developed out of the mixture of Romans, Goths and

Lombards. In fact, it became necessary to invent a name for the northern

part of Lothar's dominions, and that portion between Burgundy and

Holland was called, after him, Lotharingia. As Lothringen in German,

and Lorraine in French, the name still remains in existence.



Each of the three monarchs received unrestricted sway over his realm.

They agreed, however, upon a common line of policy in the interest of

the dynasty, and admitted the right of inheritance to each other's

sovereignty, in the absence of direct heirs. The Treaty of Verdun,

therefore, marks the beginning of Germany and France as distinct

nationalities; and now, after following the Germanic races over the

greater part of Europe for so many centuries, we come back to recommence

their history on the soil where we first found them. In fact, the word

Deutsch, "German," signifying of the people, now first came into

general use, to designate the language and the races--Franks, Alemanni,

Bavarians, Thuringians, Saxons, etc.--under Ludwig's rule. There was, as

yet, no political unity among these races; they were reciprocally

jealous, and often hostile; but, by contrast with the inhabitants of

France and Italy, they felt their blood-relationship as never before,

and a national spirit grew up, of a narrower but more natural character

than that which Charlemagne endeavored to establish.



Internal struggles awaited both the Roman Emperor, Lothar, and the Frank

king, Karl the Bald. The former was obliged to suppress revolts in

Provence and Italy; the latter in Brittany and Aquitaine, while the

Spanish Mark, beyond the Pyrenees, passed out of his hands. Ludwig the

German inherited a long peace at home, but a succession of wars with the

Wends and Bohemians along his eastern frontier. The Norsemen came down

upon his coasts, destroyed Hamburg, and sailed up the Elbe with 600

vessels, burning and plundering wherever they went. The necessity of

keeping an army almost constantly in the field gave the clergy and

nobility an opportunity of exacting better terms for their support; the

independent dukedoms, suppressed by Charlemagne, were gradually

re-established, and thus Ludwig diminished his own power while

protecting his territory from invasion.



[Sidenote: 858.]



The Emperor, Lothar, soon discovered that he had made a bad bargain. His

long and narrow empire was most difficult to govern, and in 855, weary

with his annoyances and his endless marches to and fro, he abdicated and

retired into a monastery, where he died within a week. The empire was

divided between his three sons: Ludwig received Italy and was crowned by

the Pope; to Karl was given the territory between the Rhone, the Alps

and the Mediterranean, and to Lothar II. the portion extending from the

Rhone to the North Sea. When the last of these died, in 869, Ludwig the

German and Karl the Bald divided his territory, the line running between

Verdun and Metz, then along the Vosges, and terminating at the Rhine

near Basle,--almost precisely the same boundary as that which France has

been forced to accept in 1871.



But the conditions of the oath taken by the two kings in 842 were not

observed by either. Karl the Bald was a tyrannical and unpopular

sovereign, and when he failed in preventing the Norsemen from ravaging

all Western France, the nobles determined to set him aside and invite

Ludwig to take his place. The latter consented, marched into France with

a large army, and was hailed as king; but when his army returned home,

and he trusted to the promised support of the Frank nobles, he found

that Karl had repurchased their allegiance, and there was no course left

to him but to retreat across the Rhine. The trouble was settled by a

meeting of the two kings, which took place at Coblentz, in 860.



Ludwig the German had also, like his father, serious trouble with his

sons, Karlmann and Ludwig. He had made the former Duke of Carinthia,

but ere long discovered that he had entered into a conspiracy with

Rastitz, king of the Moravian Slavonians. Karlmann was summoned to

Regensburg (Ratisbon), which was then Ludwig's capital, and was finally

obliged to lead an army against his secret ally, Rastitz, who was

conquered. A new war with Zwentebold, king of Bohemia, who was assisted

by the Sorbs, Wends, and other Slavonic tribes along the Elbe, broke out

soon afterwards. Karlmann led his father's forces against the enemy, and

after a struggle of four years forced Bohemia, in 873, to become

tributary to Germany.



[Sidenote: 876. DEATH OF LUDWIG THE GERMAN.]



In 875, the Emperor, Ludwig II. (Lothar's son), who ruled in Italy, died

without heirs. Karl the Bald and Ludwig the German immediately called

their troops into the field and commenced the march to Italy, in order

to divide the inheritance or fight for its sole possession. Ludwig sent

his sons, but their uncle, Karl the Bald, was before them. He was

acknowledged by the Lombard nobles at Pavia, and crowned in Rome by the

Pope, before it could be prevented. Ludwig determined upon an instant

invasion of France, but in the midst of the preparations he died at

Frankfort, in 876. He was seventy-one years old; as a child he had sat

on the knees of Charlemagne; as an independent king of Germany, he had

reigned thirty-six years, and with him the intelligence, prudence and

power which had distinguished the Carolingian line came to an end.



Again the kingdom was divided among three sons, Karlmann, Ludwig the

Younger, and Karl the Fat; and again there were civil wars. Karl the

Bald made haste to invade Germany before the brothers were in a

condition to oppose him; but he was met by Ludwig the Younger and

terribly defeated, near Andernach on the Rhine. The next year he died,

leaving one son, Ludwig the Stammerer, to succeed him.



The brothers, in accordance with a treaty made before their father's

death, thus divided Germany: Karlmann took Bavaria, Carinthia, the

provinces on the Danube, and the half-sovereignty over Bohemia and

Moravia; Ludwig the Younger became king over all Northern and Central

Germany, leaving Suabia (formerly Alemannia) for Karl the Fat.

Karlmann's first act was to take possession of Italy, which acknowledged

his rule. He was soon afterwards struck with apoplexy, and died in 880.

Karl the Fat had already crossed the Alps; he forced the Lombard nobles

to accept him, and was crowned Emperor at Rome, as Karl III., in 881.

Meanwhile the Germans had recognized Ludwig the Younger as Karlmann's

heir, and had given to Arnulf, the latter's illegitimate son, the Duchy

of Carinthia.



[Sidenote: 882.]



Ludwig the Younger died, childless, in 882, and thus Germany and Italy

became one empire under Karl the Fat. By this time Friesland and Holland

were suffering from the invasions of the Norsemen, who had built a

strong camp on the banks of the Meuse, and were beginning to threaten

Germany. Karl marched against them, but, after a siege of some weeks, he

shamefully purchased a truce by giving them territory in Holland, and

large sums in gold and silver, and by marrying a princess of the

Carolingian blood to Gottfried, their chieftain. They then sailed down

the Meuse, with 200 vessels laden with plunder.



All classes of the Germans were filled with rage and shame, at this

disgrace. The Dukes and Princes who were building up their local

governments profited by the state of affairs, to strengthen their power.

Karl was called to Italy to defend the Pope against the Saracens, and

when he returned to Germany in 884, he found a Count Hugo almost

independent in Lorraine, the Norsemen in possession of the Rhine nearly

as far as Cologne, and Arnulf of Carinthia engaged in a fierce war with

Zwentebold, king of Bohemia. Karl turned his forces against the last of

these, subdued him, and then, with the help of the Frisians, expelled

the Norsemen. The two grand-sons of Karl the Bald, Ludwig and Karlmann,

died about this time, and the only remaining one, Charles (afterwards

called the Silly), was still a young child. The Frank nobles therefore

offered the throne to Karl the Fat, who accepted it and thus restored,

for a short time, the Empire of Charlemagne.



Once more he proved himself shamefully unworthy of the power confided to

his hands. He suffered Paris to sustain a nine months' siege by the

Norsemen, before he marched to its assistance, and then, instead of

meeting the foemen in open field, he paid them a heavy ransom for the

city and allowed them to spend the following winter in Burgundy, and

plunder the land at their will. The result was a general conspiracy

against his rule, in Germany as well as in France. At the head of it was

Bishop Luitward, Karl's chancellor and confidential friend, who, being

detected, fled to Arnulf in Carinthia, and instigated the latter to

rise in rebellion. Arnulf was everywhere victorious: Karl the Fat,

deserted by his army and the dependent German nobles, was forced, in

887, to resign the throne and retire to an estate in Suabia, where he

died the following year.



[Sidenote: 887. ARNULF OF CARINTHIA KING.]



Duke Arnulf, the grandson of Ludwig the German, though not legitimately

born, now became king of Germany. Being accepted at Ratisbon and

afterwards at Frankfort by the representatives of the people, he was

able to keep them united under his rule, while the rest of the former

Frank Empire began to fall to pieces. As early as 879, a new kingdom,

called Burgundy, or Arelat, from its capital Arles, was formed between

the Rhone and the Alps; Berengar, the Lombard Duke of Friuli, in Italy,

usurped the inheritance of the Carolingian line there; Count Rudolf, a

great-grandson of Ludwig the Pious, established the kingdom of Upper

Burgundy, embracing a part of Eastern France, with Western Switzerland;

and Count Odo of Paris, who gallantly defended the city against the

Norsemen, was chosen king of France by a large party of the nobles.



King Arnulf, who seems to have possessed as much wisdom as bravery, did

not interfere with the pretensions of these new rulers, so long as they

forbore to trespass on his German territory, and he thereby secured the

friendship of all. He devoted himself to the liberation of Germany from

the repeated invasions of the Danes and Norsemen on the north, and the

Bohemians on the east. The former had entrenched themselves strongly

among the marshes near Louvain, where Arnulf's best troops, which were

cavalry, could not reach them. He set an example to his army by

dismounting and advancing on foot to the attack: the Germans followed

with such impetuosity that the Norse camp was taken, and nearly all its

defenders slaughtered. From that day Germany was free from Northern

invasion.



Arnulf next marched against his old enemy, Zwentebold (in some histories

the name is written Sviatopulk) of Bohemia. This king and his people

had recently been converted to Christianity by the missionary Methodius,

but it had made no change in their predatory habits. They were the more

easily conquered by Arnulf, because the Magyars, a branch of the Finnish

race who had pressed into Hungary from the east, attacked them at the

same time. The Magyars were called "Hungarians" by the Germans of that

day--as they are at present--because they had taken possession of the

territory which had been occupied by the Huns, more than four centuries

before; but they were a distinct race, resembling the Huns only in their

fierceness and daring. They were believed to be cannibals, who drank the

blood and devoured the hearts of their slain enemies; and the panic they

created throughout Germany was as great as that which went before Attila

and his barbarian hordes.



[Sidenote: 894.]



After the subjection of the Bohemians, Arnulf was summoned to Italy, in

the year 894, where he assisted Berengar, king of Lombardy, to maintain

his power against a rival. He then marched against Rudolf, king of Upper

Burgundy, who had been conspiring against him, and ravaged his land. By

this time, it appears, his personal ambition was excited by his

successes: he determined to become Emperor, and as a means of securing

the favor of the Pope, he granted the most extraordinary privileges to

the Church in Germany. He ordered that all civil officers should execute

the orders of the clerical tribunals; that excommunication should affect

the civil rights of those on whom it fell; that matters of dispute

between clergy and laymen should be decided by the Bishops, without

calling witnesses,--with other decrees of the same character, which

practically set the Church above the civil authorities.



The Popes, by this time, had embraced the idea of becoming temporal

sovereigns, and the dissensions among the rulers of the Carolingian line

already enabled them to secure a power, of which the former Bishops of

Rome had never dreamed. In the early part of the ninth century, the

so-called "Isidorian Decretals" (because they bore the name of Bishop

Isidor, of Seville) came to light. They were forged documents,

purporting to be decrees of the ancient Councils of the Church, which

claimed for the Bishop of Rome (the Pope) the office of Vicar of Christ

and Vicegerent of God upon earth, with supreme power not only over all

Bishops, priests and individual souls, but also over all civil

authorities. The policy of the Papal chair was determined by these

documents, and several centuries elapsed before their fictitious

character was discovered.



Arnulf, after these concessions to the Church, went to Italy in 895. He

found the Pope, Formosus, in the power of a Lombard prince, whom the

former had been compelled against his will, to crown as Emperor. Arnulf

took Rome by force of arms, liberated the Pope, and in return was

crowned Roman Emperor. He fell dangerously ill immediately afterwards,

and it was believed that he had been poisoned. Formosus, who died the

following year, was declared "accurst" by his successor, Stephen VII.,

and his body was dug up and cast into the Tiber, after it had lain nine

months in the grave.



[Sidenote: 899. LUDWIG THE CHILD.]



Arnulf returned to Germany as Emperor, but weak and broken in body and

mind. He never recovered from the effects of the poison, but lingered

for three years longer, seeing his Empire becoming more and more weak

and disorderly. He died in 899, leaving one son, Ludwig, only seven

years old. This son, known in history as "Ludwig the Child," was the

last of the Carolingian line in Germany. In France, the same line, now

represented by Charles the Silly, was also approaching its end.



At a Diet held at Forchheim (near Nuremberg), Ludwig the Child was

accepted as king of Germany, and solemnly crowned. On account of his

tender years, he was placed in charge of Archbishop Hatto of Mayence,

who was appointed, with Duke Otto of Saxony, to govern temporarily in

his stead. An insurrection in Lorraine was suppressed; but now a more

formidable danger approached from the East. The Hungarians invaded

Northern Italy in 899, and ravaged part of Bavaria on their return to

the Danube. Like the Huns, they destroyed everything in their way,

leaving a wilderness behind their march.



The Bavarians, with little assistance from the rest of Germany, fought

the Hungarians until 907, when their Duke, Luitpold, was slain in

battle, and his son Arnulf purchased peace by a heavy tribute. Then the

Hungarians invaded Thuringia, whose Duke, Burkhard, also fell fighting

against them, after which they plundered a part of Saxony. Finally, in

910, the whole strength of Germany was called into the field; Ludwig,

eighteen years old, took command, met the Hungarians on the banks of the

Inn, and was utterly defeated. He fled from the field, and was forced,

thenceforth, to pay tribute to Hungary. He died in 911, and Germany was

left without a hereditary ruler.