Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/56

42 their suite; but, on the 17th of September, political reasons made him set them at liberty, after extorting solemn vows from both, that they would never attempt to revenge the treatment they had received, or enter the principality of Benevento in arms.

On leaving Benevento, the emperor sent Angelberga to hold a diet at Ravenna, where it immediately became a question, how they should punish Adalgise. She had no scruples concerning the oath; but Lewis, though absolved by the pope, did not think himself at liberty to act in person, leaving it entirely to the empress. She speedily assembled an army for that purpose; but, in the mean time, Adalgise again made his peace with Lewis, though, immediately after, he allied himself more closely than ever with the Greeks, and became a vassal of their emperor.

As Lewis had the succession in Lorrain much at heart, he sent, in the same year 872, Angelberga to treat with the two kings, his uncles, upon the subject. Charles the Bald avoided an interview; but the empress worked so adroitly upon the mind of Lewis, of Germany, who was inclined to be an honest man, that, without acquainting his new subjects with what he intended, he gave up his share in the kingdom of Lorrain, to his nephew, Lewis II.

While Angelberga thus employed her understanding in the service of her husband, the great lords of Italy, to whom she was obnoxious, profiting of the chagrin he yet felt, concerning the unfortunate affair of Benevento, which might be attributed, in a great measure, to her conduct, sought to entangle him with a mistress; and persuaded him to send a courier to the empress, desiring her to wait for him in Lombardy, where he meant speedily to come. Whether Angelberga knew the