830-831 Disunion Lothair abuses of government, principally in relation to 824-987 Church-affairs, and the counter-revolution was now rapidly maturing. Lothair nevertheless assumed the supreme authority, treating his father between as a dethroned monarch and his brothers Pepin- and his and Louis as his vassals, to their great indignation. They suspected that they had been overreached:-had they not been playing Lothair's game? brothers. employed for the promoting union-a tion of empire The confidants of Louis-le-débonnaire craftily Schemes suggested to him that he might detach Pepin and by Louis Louis-le-Germanique from their elder brother, purpose of and employ the faithless against the disobedient: fresh disan item of degrading policy added to the family patie account and encreasing the sum total of wrong. proposed. Gundobald, a monk, ambitious and unconscientious (afterwards Archbishop of Rouen) was the negotiator. A fifth partition of the Empire was proposed.-Lothair to be restricted to Italy, the kingdoms of Pepin and Louis-le-Germanique to be encreased and a competent endowment given to Charles-le-Chauve. The revulsion of feeling in favour of Louis, became impetuous amongst the northern and eastern populations of the Empire. It was agreed that a general Placitum The cause should be summoned for the purpose of a paci- restoration fication. Lothair proposed that the Assembly should be held somewhere in Romanized Gaul; but Louis, knowing where his own strength was to be found, convened the Placitum at Nime of the prospers. 824-987 guen, amongst or nigh his peculiar adherents. The Germans generally felt deeply for the humi830-831. liation which the son of Charlemagne had susdébonnaire tained, and rose enthusiastically in his favour. Louis-le replaced in his authority. Lothair was urged by his partizans to give battle to his father, but he dared not. Louis-le-débonnaire was replaced upon the Imperial throne, and, reinaugurated, he reassumed the exercise of his power. The leaders of the revolt were tried, and found guilty of high treason; Louis-le-débonnaire's mercy remitted the sentence of capital Submission punishment. Wala was ordered to return to his monastery at Corbey and live according to rule, but he would not acknowledge that he had been in the wrong; and his obstinacy was punished by imprisonment in a cavern near the lake of Geneva. of Lothair and his brothers. Judith clears her Judith, restored to her husband, the vows she self of the had taken upon compulsion were pronounced to be null. Proclamation was made that any one charges brought against her of law, nard by wager of battle. who could prefer any charge against the Empress, and Ber- still stigmatized by report as an adulteress, should come forward. No witness appeared: nevertheless, according to the antient usages of the Franks, she cleared herself by compurgation or wager of law-she declared her innocence upon oath, and the compurgators swore that they believed in the truth of her asseveration. The compurgatory process, common under various modifications to all the antient nations, could never be otherwise than an uncertain mode of trial, yet wisely 832-833 adapted to the imperfection of human judgment 824-987 and the exigencies of human society. The legist will find it impracticable to suggest any more eligible mode for repelling a grave accusation positively preferred, though grounded only upon common fame-troth undistinguishable from truth, -affirmative evidence unattainable, and negative evidence unavailable.-Bernard vindicated himself against the imputation by wager of battle. He challenged his accusers, but no accuser dared to meet him in the lists. Lothair was deprived of the Imperial authority, and returned to Italy, Pepin to Aquitaine, and Louis-le-Germanique to his diminished kingdom, Alemannia being administered on behalf of Charles-le-Chauve; and Louis-le-débonnaire hastened to Remiremont in the Vosges, resorting again to the scenes which had delighted him in his bright youthful days, the streams swarming with fish and the forests stocked with game and deer. tion of the ary party. § 10. It must be accepted as an incontro- Reanimavertible axiom, that a restoration never places a revolutionmonarch exactly in the situation which he held before he comes in by a new title. Louis can scarcely be said to have been restored: the violence which ejected him was transient, his case was not the resumption of an authority which had ceased, but rather the triumph of a party over a faction. Louis had defeated Lothair: the North-German interest had prevailed over Ro 824-987 manized France. Much as Louis deserved the love of his subjects, he failed to retain their con832-833 fidence. The Lothairians, as we may call them, 832. The sons revolt again. Agobard being their chief intellectual leader, maintained that the conduct of Louis was wholly illegal-by disturbing the settlement of the kingdom, violating the compact upon which the primary partition of the Empire was founded and the Charta divisionis confirmed by oath, he was an instigator of perjury, a delinquent against the state. All these motives are expressed in Agobard's manifesto. Audite omnes gentes, are the words by which Agobard begins his address: sternly and solemnly energetic, he fulminates his political anathema, and the sentiments were universally adopted by the Revolu tionists. A period of distracting anxiety ensued. Louis, mistrustful of his sons, yet not daring to shew his suspicions: the sons only waiting an opportunity for commencing hostilities. Louis soon gave them that opportunity. Pepin behaved discourteously and ungraciously, refused to attend a general Placitum, and disturbed the Christmas festivities by an abrupt departure from the Court. Louis construed this conduct into a revolt, and prepared to act accordingly. Louis-le-Germanique, from whom so large a portion of his dominion had been wrested for the benefit of Charles, made a general levy of all his subjects, Germans and Sclavonians, 833. bond and free, and prepared to recover Aleman- 824-987 nia, the old Suabian land. Yet Louis-le-débonnaire, undismayed and uninstructed by adversity, and never abandoning his ruling idea, only sought to turn all the circumstances to the advantage of his darling Charles, and proposed a sixth division of his empire. He adjudicated that Louis atAquitaine was forfeited by Pepin: this kingdom gain he would give to Charles, and Lothair should sacrificing receive the remaining portions of the Empire. tempts to Lothair, by Pepin and un-ique. He The proceeding was equally harsh and constitutional: the Aquitanians claimed to have a voice in the election of their sovereign: no one knew the right better than Louis-le-débonnaire, but his doting fondness for Charles blinded him. proposes a sixth part tion of the Empire. If the Aquitanians made a show of assent to the transfer, their consent was extorted; and amongst the many errors of Louis-le-débonnaire, none was more conducive to calamity. All the enemies of Louis recovered their transiently depressed energy. Wala was delivered from his cavern. The alliance between Lothair, Pepin and Louis-le-Germanique was renewed, and they declared open war against their father. Hostilities were recommenced by them, considerately and vindictively. Lothair marched from Italy accompanied by Pope Gregory the Fourth, who gory IV. had succeeded to the Pontificate, a Roman by crated. birth, and to whom Rome owed many monuments of magnificence. The Pontiff had been 828. Pope Gre conse VOL. 1. U |