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62 Parisians, however, refused to agree to this last condition and to allow the viking vessels to pass under the fortified bridges which they had defended with so much valour. The Danes were obliged to draw their boats to land to get them above the city by the river bank, but, none the less, they reached Burgundy, which they ravaged. Sens, in particular, stood a siege of six months.

In the meanwhile the Emperor fell sick and returned to Alsace. During the Easter season he held an assembly at Waiblingen near Stuttgart, at which was present, among others, Berengar, Marquess of Friuli. From thence he went to Kirchen in the Breisgau, where he was sought out by Ermengarde, widow of Boso, with her young son Louis. Boso, in spite of the capture of Vienne and the efforts of the Carolingian kings and their lieutenants, had succeeded in maintaining his ground in the kingdom he had created for himself, and died unsubdued (11 January 887). The son whom he left, Louis, was still almost a child when his mother brought him to the Emperor. Charles the Fat received him kindly, recognised his right to succeed his father, and even went through some kind of ceremony of adopting him. But the young prince was not long to be benefited by his protection. The discontent of the magnates with the Emperor, whom they accused of weakness and incapacity, and with the counsellor by whom he was chiefly guided, his chancellor Liutward, Bishop of Vercelli, grew greater every day. Charles endeavoured to placate them by dismissing his chancellor, but their dissatisfaction still continued undiminished, and at the end of 887 a revolt broke out, facilitated by Charles's illness and physical incapacity. The rebels, in an assembly held at Tribur near Darmstadt, formally deposed the Emperor. He returned to Neidingen on the Danube near Constance, where he made a pitiable end on 13 January 888, while his former vassals proclaimed in his room Arnulf of Carinthia, son of Carloman of Bavaria, of illegitimate birth, it is true, but well known for his warlike qualities, and, in the eyes of the magnates, the only prince capable of defending the Empire, or at least the kingdom of Germany, against the enemies threatening it on every side.

The deposition of Charles the Fat marks the epoch of the final dismemberment of the Empire of Charlemagne. Even contemporaries were conscious of this. "Then," said the Lotharingian chronicler, Regino of Prüm, in a justly famous passage, "the kingdoms which had been subject to the government of Charles split up into fragments, breaking the bond which united them, and without waiting for their natural lord, each one sought to create a king of its own, drawn from within itself; which thing was the cause of long wars, not that there were lacking Frankish princes worthy of empire by their noble birth, their courage, and their wisdom, but because their equality in origin, dignity and power was a fresh cause for discord. None of them in fact was sufficiently raised above the rest to make them willing to submit