A History of Germany from the Earliest Times to the Present Day

by Bayard Taylor

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.

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.

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.