The Historians' History of the World 07

No sooner did Charles the Bald receive the welcome tidings of his brother’s death than he made ready to rob his East Frankish nephews; he was eager to seize upon the whole of the dominions left by Lothair II, and to gain possession of the intervening kingdom of Lorraine as well as of the imperial crown. Though his own country was at this time suffering grievously at the hands of the Northmen, he led his army into Lorraine and occupied the important cities of Cologne and Aachen. But he had mistaken the character of Ludwig the younger, who was one of the last vigorous offshoots of the mighty Carlovingian breed, a valiant soldier and a sagacious leader. Charles allowed Ludwig to decoy him into giving battle under disadvantageous conditions at Andernach, and suffered a severe defeat, in which the greater part of the West Frankish army was put to the sword and many nobles were taken prisoners or robbed of their costly robes and jewels. Many of them were obliged to return home without even their weapons, and their cowardly king saved himself by shameful flight.

After Charles the Bald had come back to his kingdom the Norman pest began anew. The pirates could only be induced to withdraw by the payment of a huge sum of money, which Charles levied upon the whole country under the name of the Norman Tax (Normannensteuer). Soon afterwards an urgent appeal for help reached him from Italy, from the pope, who was suffering at one and the same time under the oppression of the Saracens and of the Italian nobles. The latter were at permanent feud with him, and did not even respect the churches and the consecrated vessels. Charles was not profoundly touched by the pope’s entreaties, but he was keenly alive to the fear that some Italian noble might set the imperial crown upon his own head, and therefore, in spite of the desperate state of his own country, he resolved to make a fresh military expedition into Italy. In the summer of 877 he held a convocation of lords temporal and spiritual at Quierzy, to take counsel with them on the subject of the Roman expedition. Most of them tried to dissuade him from it, urging the miseries under which his own kingdom was suffering; but Charles, nevertheless, started for Italy at the head of an army.

[877-879 A.D.]

Pope John VIII, who had but shortly before confirmed Charles’ election to the imperial dignity at a synod held at Ravenna, hastened to Pavia to meet him. There they were also met by the alarming news that King Carloman had come in haste with an army from the kingdom of the East Franks, and was already in upper Italy. The feeble monarch’s timorous spirit made him welcome the further tidings which came from his own country, to the effect that the nobles whom he had left behind in the kingdom of the West Franks were conspiring against him. He hurried back to his own dominions in hot haste, without waiting to confront his adversary; and the pope had to go home with his purpose unachieved.

Death overtook the West Frankish monarch suddenly as he was crossing the Alps. The rumour ran that Zedekiah, his Jewish physician in ordinary, had poisoned him with a powder administered as medicine. Despised by all and loved by none, the king departed this life in the forty-sixth year of his age, a man wholly vile, as his contemporaries said, and one whom the annalist of Fuldac calls “timorous as a hare.”

LUDWIG THE YOUNGER

Carloman meanwhile remained in upper Italy. When the news of the death of Charles the Bald reached him he addressed a letter to the pope, requesting him to bestow upon him the imperial dignity in return for the customary promises. Negotiations on the subject had nearly come to their conclusion when an infectious malady broke out among the German forces and Carloman fell a victim to it. The army had to retreat hastily across the Alps, carrying their sick king in a litter. This admirable prince was not destined to recover. Like all the sons of Ludwig the German, he had a tendency to brain disease and paralysis, inherited probably from their mother Imma. From this time forward he lived on one of his estates at Oetting in Bavaria. Later the unhappy man was smitten with a paralytic stroke which deprived him of the power of speech and motion. He died in the autumn of 880, after languishing for three years in a condition which rendered him incapable of discharging any of the functions of government. There was no issue of his marriage, but he had an illegitimate son, the offspring of a liaison with a lady of rank, upon whom he had conferred the Mark of Carinthia during his illness. All his contemporaries agree in describing Carloman as a prince of great valour and exceptional ability, and the decline of his powers in the prime of life as a great misfortune for the empire.

A West Frank