The Historians' History of the World 07

This division greatly enraged the eldest sons of Louis, as they conceived themselves slighted thereby. The partisans of unity, who saw the agreement of 817 compromised, and the nobles joined with the discontented sons in the hope of overthrowing the influence of Judith and Bernhard—an influence which diminished their credit. The revolt broke out in an expedition against the Bretons, to whom Nomenoé had just given independence. Lothair, Pepin of Aquitaine, and Ludwig of Bavaria took arms against their father, made him prisoner and shut him up at Compiègne with the monks hoping that they might induce him to adopt a monastic life. At the same time they sent the empress and her son into a convent (830). The constitution of 817 was re-established. Louis le Débonnaire, however, obtained that the general assembly which was to make statutes for this new state of affairs should be convoked at Nimeguen in the midst of the Germans in whom he trusted. This trust was justified. The Germans outnumbered the Roman Franks and carried the day (830). A wily monk prevented discord among the three brothers, and Louis le Débonnaire, now master once more, confirmed the gift he had made to his fourth son. In 833 he did more, for, weary of Pepin’s perpetual intrigues, he took Aquitaine from him and gave it to Charles. This was the signal for a fresh revolt. The emperor’s sons marched against him, carrying with them Pope Gregory IV, who had come to France to defend the division of 817. Was Gregory for unity? Yes, but it was for a unity which resulted from the act of 817, that is, for a weak emperor in view of whose weakness religious unity had more strength. The army of Louis and that of his sons met in the plain of Rothfeld, near Colmar in Alsace (833). His soldiers abandoned him without a blow, and this treason gave the spot the name of Lügenfeld, or Field of Lies. The conquerors insulted the age and rank of their father by exposing him to public humiliation.b

HUMILIATION OF LOUIS

[833-834 A.D.]

A penance imposed by the church was laid upon the emperor in Soissons, excluding him from the communion of believers, so that he could not retain the reins of government. Although nobody doubted his imperial dignity, yet the emperor was in a sad and melancholy frame of mind. It is narrated that he had been told that his youngest son Charles had been forced to become a monk, and that his consort had not only become a nun, but had already died far away. He was cut off from all society, and the story goes that he had already been persuaded to order the monks surrounding him to say masses for the departed.

Such a situation is doubly painful to the wielder of supreme power, who has often to perceive that the responsibility lies at his own door.

In such desperate isolation was the emperor Louis, when a message from the ecclesiastical synod at Soissons reached him, reminding him of all his transgressions and urging him not to imperil his very soul, seeing that he had forfeited the secular power by the judgment of God and the authority of the church.

Louis begged for time for consideration. When the day he had himself appointed arrived, all the great ecclesiastics of Compiègne proceeded to Soissons to remind him of those acts by which he had offended God, given umbrage to the church, and brought disaster on the people. The emperor listened without contradiction, and declared his readiness to submit to the judgment of the church. At his request Lothair attended with some of his chief adherents, in order to be present at the solemn penance. This painful ordeal took place at the beginning of October, 833, in the church of St. Médard at Soissons, in presence of Lothair and the highest court dignitaries, and of a crowd which filled the church. Louis made a general confession that he had not duly fulfilled the duties of his office and had thereby sinned against God; that he had also set the Christian church at nought, and thereby brought confusion to the people, and that in expiation of these crimes he was ready to submit to public and ecclesiastical penance in order now to receive absolution from those to whom power was given on earth to bind and to absolve.

The ecclesiastical lords were not quite satisfied with this declaration; they required of him an explicit confession of his misdeeds; they gave utterance to their apprehensions that the emperor would return to his former reprehensible conduct as he had done once before, three years ago.

Hereupon Louis in still stronger terms repeated that he had given offence to the church, and that he purposed to be a model penitent; whereat the ecclesiastical lords placed in his hands a list of his offences, the contents of which are readily seen in the three heads—sacrilege, perjury, and murder. It does not appear whether Louis acknowledged the truth of these accusations in detail. Had he done so, the history of his life would present the most repulsive spectacle, and be absolutely incomprehensible.