[61]. 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.’
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 country-side harried, from the Scheldt-mouth to the Eifel. |Austrasia harried by the Danes.| 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, Zülpich, 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.
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 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.
|Charles the Fat, king of Germany.| 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 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 faint-hearted 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. |Treaty of Elsloo, 882.| 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 while Alfred was strong enough to compel Guthrum to keep faith, his own character was hardly likely to have a similar influence on Godfred.
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 of 882-3 was as disastrous for northern France as that of 881-2 had been for the Rhineland. From Rheims to Amiens and Courtray, the whole country-side was harried: king Carloman and his nobles, instead of copying the conduct of Lewis III., and remembering the triumph of Saucourt, followed the miserable example of Charles the Fat, and paid the invaders the enormous bribe of 12,000 lbs. of silver to induce them to transfer themselves to Austrasia, England, Ireland, or any other realm that they might choose. In the moment of rest obtained by the temporary departure of the pirates, Carloman died, ere yet he had reached his twentieth year. He was accidentally slain by one of his companions, while hunting the boar in a forest near Les Andelys (884). The Carolingian line was now well-nigh spent: five kings had died in five years, and the only males surviving were the shiftless emperor Charles the Fat, and Carloman’s younger brother, a child of five, the posthumous son of Lewis the Stammerer, the prince whom the next generation was to know as Charles the Simple.
|Charles the Fat inherits Neustria, 884.| Rather than face the horrors of a minority, the West Franks sent to the emperor and besought him to take up the kingship of Neustria. All the empire that had obeyed Charles the Great was therefore united once more beneath a single sceptre, save the little realm of king Boso, in Provence. But Charles the Fat was a sorry substitute for his great namesake. The three years of his reign over the whole of the Frankish kingdoms (884-7) were fated to shatter the last remnants of loyalty in the breasts of the subjects of the empire, and to cause them to cast away the old royal house in despair, and seek new saviours and new kings.
The history of these three evil years is easily told. Hearing of the death of Carloman, the Danes flocked back to Neustria: ‘oaths sworn to a dead man,’ they said, ‘did not count.’ But their return was chiefly caused by a thorough beating which their main body had suffered at Rochester from the strong hand of king Alfred. At the same time the converted Viking Godfred rose in rebellion on the Lower Rhine. He impudently bade the emperor give him the rich lands about Bonn and Coblenz, ‘because his duchy had no vineyards to yield him wine.’ Charles did not take arms against him, but sent ambassadors to lure him to a conference. When the Dane appeared, the counts Henry and Eberhard treacherously cut him down, and massacred his retinue. The army of Godfred broke up; some of his warriors went plundering in Saxony, where they were cut to pieces, the rest joined king Siegfred, who was just about to invade Neustria (885).
|Great Siege of Paris.| The great host of the Vikings had once more united itself under Siegfred, and entered north France, as if designing to subdue the whole country and settle down therein. But they met with an unexpected resistance at Paris, where the local count and bishop, Odo and Gozelin, had gathered together all the best warriors of Neustria. The defence of Paris was the bravest feat of arms which the Franks had wrought since the battle of Saucourt. They maintained the isle of Paris, with its two fortified bridge-heads over the two branches of the Seine, for more than eleven months, against all the assaults of the Northmen (Nov. 885-Oct. 886). Seven hundred Viking keels were drawn ashore on the flat land where the Champ de Mars now lies, and 40,000 Vikings beset the city on all sides. But though shamefully abandoned by the emperor—who chose the time as suitable for a journey to Italy—Odo and Gozelin refused to despair, even when the northern bridge-head was cut off from the city by an inundation, and burnt by the besiegers.
At last, in the summer of 886, Charles the Fat so far bestirred himself as to raise the national levies of the whole empire, and march to the relief of Paris with an army not less than that which he had led four years earlier against the camp of Elsloo. But when his vanguard received a check, and its leader, Henry, duke of Franconia, was slain, the emperor refused to risk an attack on the Danes. |Charles the Fat bribes the Danes.| Once more the disgraceful scene of Elsloo was renewed: Charles paid the Danes 700 lbs. of silver, and gave them permission to pass up the Seine into Burgundy, and work their will there. He was angry with the Burgundians for refusing him obedience and leaning to the cause of Boso, the king of Arles, and chose this despicable means of wreaking his vengeance on them.
Paris was saved, and the reputation of its gallant defender, count Odo, raised to the highest pitch. But the emperor had thrown away his last chance, and forfeited the respect of even the meanest of his subjects. His remaining days were few and evil. Attacked by softening of the brain, and burdened by an ever-increasing corpulence, he retired to Germany after the disgraceful treaty of Paris. There his doom was awaiting him: the counts and dukes of the East Frankish realm conspired against him, headed by his illegitimate nephew Arnulf, duke of Carinthia, the son of king Carloman. In 887 the young duke took up arms, openly announcing that he was about to march on Frankfurt and depose his uncle. |Abdication of Charles the Fat.| Charles tried to raise an army, but none of his vassals would lend him aid: in sheer despair he sent his royal crown and robes to Arnulf, abandoning the kingdom, and craving only five manors in his native Suabia to maintain him for his few remaining days. This boon the duke granted, and the unwieldy ex-Caesar dragged himself away to a royal villa at Neidingen, where he died less than three months after, worn out by the bodily ills which form the only possible excuse for his shiftless and cowardly conduct during the last three years.