There were fluttering standards and melodious trumpets; there were gallant knights, and grave men in robes and gowns, and noble ladies, and a long train of servants; there were spearmen and bowmen and horsemen in martial array; and the central figure of all this parade and pomp was a very small boy of but three years old.
Strangest of all was this small boy's dress. He was but little more than a baby, and yet he rode upon a stately war-horse housed in purple and gold. He was clad in complete armor of polished steel; on his head he wore a casque of steel and gold, surmounted with a tiny golden crown; in his small hand he bore a truncheon, and about his neck was slung a cross-handled sword of steel and gold.
A stalwart knight rode at the little boy's bridle-rein, his protecting arm holding the small rider firmly in the saddle; the royal banner fluttered ahead, and at the boy's right hand rode his governor and guardian, Count William, called the snub-nosed—well, because it was.
From castle and cottage, from town and hamlet, came thronging men and women, boys and girls, with smile and cheer and shout of hearty welcome: "Heaven bless his little Grace! God guard our little King! Long live King Louis!"
"HEAVEN BLESS HIS LITTLE GRACE."
For this very small boy of three was indeed a King entering his dominion. He had been crowned by the Pope at Rome King of Aquitaine. Then, from his father's splendid palace in Aachen, or what is now the German city of Aix-la-Chapelle, he had started with his glittering escort to take possession of his kingdom in southwestern France. Over the first part of the route he was carried in his cradle; but when he left the city of Orleans, and, crossing the Loire, set foot within his own dominions, this cradle-travelling, so the old chronicle tells us, "beseemed him no longer." He was a King, and this was his kingdom; therefore like a King he must make his royal progress. So upon this little three-year-old was put a suit of shining armor, made expressly for him, with sword and truncheon "equally proportioned"; they set him on horseback, and thus royally attended he entered Aquitaine, and marched on to his own royal palace at Toulouse. He must have looked "awfully cunning"—this three-year-old in armor—but just think how tired the poor little fellow must have been.
Aquitaine was that large section of southwestern France that stretched from the river Loire to the Pyrenees, and from the Bay of Biscay eastward to the banks of the Rhone. It had been brought under subjection by the conquering monarch whose short-lived empire embraced all of Europe from Rome to Copenhagen, and from the English Channel to the Iron Gates of the Danube, and who, parcelling out his dominion among his boys, had set over the principality of Aquitaine as King his little three-year-old Louis, forever famous as the son of Charlemagne.
Here, in his palace at Toulouse, did Louis rule as King of Aquitaine for thirty-two years, subject only to his renowned father, Charles the Emperor, called Carolus Magnus, or Charlemagne. This mighty man, "the greatest of Germans"—great in stature, in aim, in energy, and in authority—looked sharply after the small boy he had made King of Aquitaine. He had the lad carefully and thoroughly educated, and Louis grew to be an intelligent, bright-faced, clear-eyed, sturdy, and strong young man, but he was sober and sedate, skilled in the Scriptures and learned in Latin and Greek, unsuited to the rough war days in which he lived, more a scholar than a soldier, and more a priest than a prince.
So the years slipped by. Then trouble came to the great Emperor. One by one the sons of Charlemagne sickened and died—those brave and stalwart boys upon whom the father had relied as the stay and help of his old age, his successors in his plan of empire. At last only Louis the Clerk was left.