66

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power over them?"-The eternal law of God, 824-987 irrespective of any humanly devised policy or legislation, creates the original compact between King and people: and the dethronement of the Sovereign who violates the bond is the deserved penalty. The Divine displeasure chastises the monarch through His appointed ministers of righteousness or wrath, even though those ministers may be His enemies.

ceedings by

Louis-ledébonnaire

But in this particular case the violent and The proirregular proceedings which professed to deprive which Louis-le-débonnaire of his regal authority, are was denot to be vindicated by the general doctrines posed, irrewhich authorize the exercise of this transcen

dently exceptional power. The tribunal was altogether incompetent: an irregular convention of certain Bishops of the Gauls, assembled without proper sanction, and destitute of any jurisdiction over the Head of the Empire: a conventicle, a conciliabulum, good for nothing. The charges to which we have before alluded were futile, the arguments irrelevant, and the ceremonies and doctrines of the Church prostituted and perverted for the purpose of forwarding the parricidal projects entertained by Lothair and his brethren. The pretended judgment was the worst of all social crimes, an act of force cloaked in the garb of justice, and therefore bringing justice into disrepute, and casting obloquy upon the very principles by which justice is sustained.

gular.

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volution.

again restored.

824-987 § 13. But the phases of this Revolution succeeded each other with national rapidity. A The second very large and influential party continued faithcounter-re-ful to the monarch, though they had neglectLouis-le- fully surrendered him to his fate. The shame of the Luegen-feld was upon them: they were appalled by the disclosure of their own corruptions. The more unmixed portions of the Franks, as well as the purely Teutonic dominions, rose in arms to deliver the Emperor. The three brothers quarrelled. Lothair was now the reigning Emperor, Cæsar and Augustus, without a partner in his dignity: Louis and Pepin found that they had worked to give him an undivided supremacy. Louis-le-Germanique began to testify an apparent sense of duty towards his father: Pepin, open hostility to both his brothers. Lothair astutely evaded the contest. The old Emperor and the young Charles were severally released and brought to Paris.

Conferences ensued between Lothair on the one part, and a powerful deputation proceeding from the German realms on the other part. The threatening aspect of the Germans aided their arguments. They demanded the liberation of their old Emperor: Pepin was advancing with his army; Lothair retreated. Louis-le-débonnaire entered the Abbey of Saint-Denis: the Bishops solved him. Girt again with his sword, the bol of power, his re-accession was announced

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by the people's cheerful acclaim. Wife and child 824-987 were restored to him. No disobedience, no rebellion could harden the heart of Louis: the guilty sons were too happy to avail themselves of his facile tenderness; and after some incidental movements of partial and receding hostility, we behold him re-established on his throne.

Lothair was ultimately settled in Lombardy, holding his court at Pavia. With him resided Wala; and it was an effective conducement to the present transient respite, that he, the old man, once the fomenter of the revolution, the cause of such bitter dissension between father and son, was now most desirous to promote peace ;the best component qualities of his energetic character were revived during the brief space of life which remained to him.

Renewed

of the

There was great reason indeed that the Em- 835-836. pire should be united: the Danes, the Northmen, Incursions had been re-appearing in great strength, embold- Northmen. ened to more incessant depredations than at any previous period, circling round and round the Gauls, but particularly directing their attacks to the Belgic coasts. The great commercial city of Dorstadt was again ravaged. In this city alone they burnt and destroyed fifty-four churches, and they settled in Walcheren, then a portion of the Delta of the Scheldt, subsequently broken by the raging floods into the five Zee-land islands. They were also evidently directing themselves

824-987 towards the estuary of the Seine. Could they gain possession of the islands embraced by the meandering river, each would be a Danish fortress in Gaul.

835.

835.-June A seventh

of the Em

posed, in

tum at Crémieux.

Louis-le-débonnaire was fully attentive to the defence of the realm; but the realm was not so dear to him as his child, Charles; and he and Judith were more and more wrapt up in that son. They were both dissatisfied with the portion assigned to Charles; and although Louis had suffered so bitterly from his previous endeavours on behalf of the boy, he actually planned a seventh partition of the empire.

He accordingly summoned a great diet at partition Crémieux, on the Rhone, near Lyons, where he pire pro- proposed his scheme. No inconveniences, no obthe Placi stacles, no dangers, restrained him from the attempt. Italy, all the territory south of the Alps, should continue to be ruled by Lothair. Aquitaine, the kingdom of Pepin, received a considerable extension-the whole territory between Seine and Loire, and thence also beyond the Seine up to the confines of the Belgic tongue. Louis was to lose Alemannia, but large cessions were made to him on the north-the whole tract between Scheldt and Rhine-by which he would gain Aix-la-Chapelle as his capital; and Charles, in addition to Alemannia, taken from Louis, was to rule Provence, the greater part of Burgundy, the dioceses of Rheims, Laon and

Treves, and other adjoining or interspersed do- 824-987 minions.

The proposition, a complete dislocation of the Empire, was however, for the present, abandoned. Louis-le-Germanique, who would on no account part with any territory of the German tongue, rejected the overture with great indignation. Lothair also was grievously dissatisfied: he would never surrender Aix-la-Chapelle, so consecrated by the remembrances of CharlemagneCharlemagne's palace, Charlemagne's tomb.

836.

Old Wala undertook the laborious journey from Bobbio, for the purpose of negotiating some pacific settlement. Louis and Judith received Wala with entire heartiness and goodwill, in which he fully participated. All mutual wrongs and grudges were forgiven, and expectations raised that Lothair and Louis-le-Germanique would yield. It was agreed that a Diet should be convened at Worms, where Lothair would attend, and conform to his father's injunctions. The appointed time arrived: no Lothair at the Diet. Contagious fevers were prevailing in Italy: Wala died Pestilence, at Bobbio. His sincerity as well as his influence of the over Lothair now became manifest; for Lothair, no longer tempered by Wala's advice, evaded the meeting at Worms, and again began to machinate against his father. Whether the pestilence in Italy extended to France, or whether, like trees coevally planted in an avenue, they were all

836.

and general depression

Country.