IX
THE INVASIONS OF THE NORTHMEN
At the death of Charlemagne the Empire that he had built up stretched from Denmark to the Pyrenees and the Duchy of Spoletum south of Rome, from the Atlantic on the West to the Baltic, Bohemia, and the Dalmatian coast. It had been a brave attempt to realize the old Roman ideal of all civilized Europe gathered under one ruler; but he himself was well aware that the foundations he had laid were weak, his own personality that must vanish the mortar holding them together. Without his genius and the terror of his name his possessions were only too likely to fall away; and therefore, instead of attempting to leave a united Empire, he nominated one son to be emperor in name, but made a rough division of his territory between three. Only the death of two just before his own defeated his aims and united the inheritance under the survivor, Louis.
The new Emperor was like his father in build, but without his wideness of outlook. His natural geniality was sometimes marred by uncontrollable fits of suspicion and cruelty, as in the case of his nephew, Bernard, King of Italy, whom he believed to be secretly conspiring to bring about his overthrow. Louis ordered the young man to appear at his court, and when Bernard hesitated, fearing treachery, his uncle sent him a special promise of safety by the Empress, whom he trusted. Reluctantly Bernard at last obeyed the summons, whereupon he was seized, thrust into a dungeon, and his eyes put out so cruelly that he died. Shortly afterwards the Empress died also, and Louis who had loved her believed that God was punishing him for his broken word. Overcome by remorse he became so devout in his religious observances that his subjects called him ‘Louis the Pious’.
Louis, like his father, was ever ready to listen to the petitions of those who were oppressed and to pass laws for their security. For the first sixteen years of his reign the Carolingian dominions, put to no test, appeared unshaken, and then of a sudden, just as if a cloud were blotting out the sunlight, prosperity and peace were lost in the horrors of civil war.
Louis the Pious had three sons by his first wife, and following Charlemagne’s example he named the eldest, Lothar, as his successor in the Empire, while he divided his lands between the other two. It was only when he married again and another son, Charles, was born to him that trouble began. This fourth son was the old Emperor’s favourite, and Louis would gladly have left him a large kingdom; but such a gift he could only make now at the expense of the elder brothers, who hated the young boy as an interloper, and were determined that he should receive nothing to which they could lay a claim.
When Charles was six years old Louis insisted that the country now called Switzerland and part of modern Germany (Suabia) should be recognized as his inheritance; and on hearing this all three elder brothers, who had been secretly making disloyal plots, broke into open revolt.
The history of the next ten years is an ignominious chronicle of the Emperor’s weakness. Twice were he and his Empress imprisoned and insulted; and on each occasion, when the quarrels of his sons amongst themselves led to his release, he was induced to grant a weak forgiveness that led to further rebellion.
When Louis died in 840, the seeds of dissension were widely scattered; and those of his House who came after him openly showed that they cared for nothing save personal ambition. Lothar, the eldest, was proclaimed Emperor, and obtained as his share of the dominions a large middle kingdom stretching from the mouth of the Rhine to Italy, and including the two capitals of Aachen and Rome. To the East, in what is now Germany, reigned his brother Louis, to the West, in France, Charles ‘the Bald’, the hated younger brother who had succeeded at the last in obtaining a substantial inheritance.