[249] At the funeral of Louis.
[250] Charles of Lower Lorraine, uncle of Louis V.
[251] The elective principle here asserted had prevailed in the choice of French and German kings for nearly a century. The kings chosen, however, usually came from one family, as the Carolingians in France.
[252] Almost exactly a century earlier there had been such a case among the Franks, when Charles the Fat was deposed and Odo, the defender of Paris, elevated to the throne (888).
[253] Charles had been made duke of Lower Lorraine by the German emperor. This passage in Adalbero's speech looks like something of an appeal to Frankish pride, or as we would say in these days, to national sentiment. Still it must be remembered that while a sense of common interest was undoubtedly beginning to develop among the peoples represented in the assembly at Senlis, these peoples were still far too diverse to be spoken of accurately as making up a unified nationality. Adalbero was indulging in a political harangue and piling up arguments for effect, without much regard for their real weight.
[254] Noyon was a church center about fifty miles north of Paris. That the coronation really occurred at this place has been questioned by some, but there seems to be small reason for doubting Richer's statement in the matter.
[255] M. Pfister in Lavisse, Histoire de France, Vol. II., p. 412, asserts that the coronation occurred July 3, 987.
[256] This method of describing the extent of the new king's dominion shows how far from consolidated the so-called Frankish kingdom really was. The royal domain proper, that is, the land over which the king had immediate control, was limited to a long fertile strip extending from the Somme to a point south of Orléans, including the important towns of Paris, Orléans, Étampes, Senlis, and Compiègne. Even this was not continuous, but was cut into here and there by the estates of practically independent feudal lords. By far the greater portion of modern France (the name in 987 was only beginning to be applied to the whole country) consisted of great counties and duchies, owing comparatively little allegiance to the king and usually rendering even less than they owed. Of these the most important was the county (later duchy) of Normandy, the county of Bretagne (Brittany), the county of Flanders, the county of Anjou, the county of Blois, the duchy of Burgundy, the duchy of Aquitaine, the county of Toulouse, the county of Gascony, and the county of Barcelona (south of the Pyrenees). The "Goths" referred to by Richer were the inhabitants of the "march," or border county, of Gothia along the Mediterranean coast between the lower Rhone and the Pyrenees (old Septimania).
[257] That is, Ethelred I., whom Alfred succeeded.
[258] Wiltshire, on the southern coast, west of the Isle of Wight.