CHAPTER VI
CHARLEMAGNE’S SUCCESSORS TO THE TREATY OF VERDUN
[814-843 A.D.]
LOUIS LE DÉBONNAIRE, OR PIOUS (814-840 A.D.)
Charlemagne’s successor, Louis le Débonnaire,[139] did not restore vanished prestige by any of his own. We may praise his goodness, his virtue, the purity of his morals, the efforts he made from the beginning of his reign to rid the court of that license which Charlemagne had allowed to enter, and his re-establishment of the necessary discipline among the monks and secular clergy; but he had not the firmness required to maintain authority. From the beginning he showed a deference to the pope that Charlemagne would have felt excessive. He allowed Stephen IV (816) to be elected and take possession of the pontificate without his consent, and was pacified by tardy excuses. When Stephen came to crown him in France, he permitted him to pronounce words which revealed the tendency of the holy see to arrogate to itself the free disposal of the imperial crown: “Peter glorifies himself in making you this present because you assure him the enjoyment of his just rights.”
[817-822 A.D.]
The papacy was already working for its second deliverance, eager to reject the authority of the Western emperors as it had rejected that of the Eastern. If Charlemagne had judged it expedient to divide authority with his sons on account of the extent of the empire, a still stronger necessity existed for Louis le Débonnaire to do the same. But his division of the states, accomplished at the Reichstag held at Aachen in July, 817, did not differ in any respect from that made by Charlemagne, and neither brought imperial unity into doubt or peril. Two subordinate kingdoms—Aquitaine and Bavaria—were created for Pepin and Louis [Ludwig]. Lothair, the eldest son, was associate emperor, or co-regent.[b]
Louis did not attribute the appointment of Lothair as co-regent and his own future successor to his own will and choice alone, but also to that of his people. Agobardus[d] does not make any mention of Bernhard and Italy, though, in the records, they have not been entirely omitted. The chronicle narrates that the kingdom of Italy shall stand in the same relation to the empire under his son as it did under his father and himself. The arrangements concerning the two younger sons of the emperor Louis were carefully weighed and considered. Pepin, the elder, received Aquitaine, Gascony, the mark of Toulouse, and a few west-Frankish and Burgundian countries. To the younger, Ludwig, were assigned Boiaria (Bavaria) and Carentania (Carinthia) with the mark of the Slavonic Avars. Each received the title of king, but great stress was laid upon the fact that they were vassals of the emperor, and neither in war nor peace, nor in any foreign relations whatsoever, should the two younger brothers act independently of the elder. Their territories, again, should not be divided up among their descendants; even the voice of their people was essential to the choice of their successors.
We can appreciate the importance of these decisions by comparing them with the ordinance of 806, which actually contemplated the existence of three independent realms bound together by mutual loyalty. The idea of the empire as finally adopted by Charlemagne was thus firmly adhered to. A decision was also arrived at, providing for the maintenance of the empire in the event of the death of Louis without legitimate heirs; one of his brothers was to succeed him, so that primogeniture would have been the result. Louis reserved to himself absolute power over his sons for the term of his natural life.
These imperial resolutions have frequently been interpreted as signifying a division, whereas nothing of the sort was contemplated, for all the rules, as laid down, aimed at the unity of the empire, with the exception of a few concessions made to hereditary rights. They were nothing more nor less than an attempt to co-ordinate the two principles upon which the empire was based, namely unity and the right of succession. The right of inheritance was founded upon long-established custom, as laid down on the death of King Pepin. On the other hand, the empire was the outcome of a political idea, which had arisen since that time, and which constituted the substance of all power. At that moment the idea of unity was predominant.[c]
But these fresh efforts were afterwards ill sustained, and already, by the movement which was agitating the confines of the empire, it was plain that the strong hand of Charlemagne was no longer there. The Northmen redoubled their ravages; the Slavs crossed the Elbe; the Avars rose; the Croats became independent; the duke of Benevento refused tribute; the African Saracens pillaged Corsica and Sardinia; those of Spain invaded Septimania and supported the Gascons in revolt; the Bretons took Morvan as king and invaded Neustria. The Franks, it is true, had the advantage everywhere. Morvan in particular was killed, and Louis made Nomenoé duke of the Bretons.