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18 months spent their time in negotiating and in drawing up statements of the case on one side or the other, the sons persistently professing the deepest respect for their father, and vowing that all their quarrel was with his evil counsellors. Things remained in this state until, in the middle of June, the Emperor resolved to go and seek his sons in order to have a personal discussion with them.

In company, then, with his supporters, he went up the left bank of the Rhine towards Alsace where the rebels were posted, and pitched his camp opposite theirs near Colmar, in the plain known as the Rothfeld. Brisk negotiations were again opened between the two parties. Pope Gregory finally went in person to the imperial camp to confer with Louis and his adherents. Did he exert his influence over the bishops who up to then had seemed resolved to stand by their Emperor? Or did the promises made by the sons work upon the magnates who still gathered round Louis? Whatever may be the explanation, a general defection set in. Within a few days the Emperor found himself deserted by all his followers and left almost alone. The place which was the scene of this shameful betrayal is traditionally known as the Lügenfeld, the Field of Lies. Louis was constrained to advise the few prelates who still kept faith with him, such as Aldric of Le Mans or Moduin of Autun, to follow the universal example. He himself, with his wife, his illegitimate brother Drogo and young Charles, surrendered to Lothar. The latter declared his father deposed from his authority and claimed the Empire as his own by right. He made use of it to share dignities and honours among his chief partisans. In order to give some show of satisfaction to his brothers, he added to Pepin's share the wide duchy of Maine, and to Louis's Saxony, Thuringia and Alsace. Judith was sent under a strong guard to Tortona in Italy, and Charles the Bald to the monastery of Prüm. After this, Pepin and Louis the German returned to their respective states, while the Pope, perhaps disgusted by the scenes he had just witnessed, quitted Lothar and betook himself directly to Rome.

Louis had been temporarily immured in the monastery of St Médard at Soissons. The assembly held by Lothar at Compiègne was not of itself competent to decree the deposition of the old Emperor, in spite of the accusations brought against him by Ebbo, Archbishop of Rheims. Lothar was forced to confine himself to bringing sufficient pressure to bear upon his father (through the agency of churchmen of the rebel party sent to Soissons) to induce him to acknowledge himself guilty of offences which rendered him unworthy of retaining power. But not satisfied with his deposition the bishops forced him besides to undergo a public humiliation. In the church of Notre-Dame at Compiègne in the presence of the assembled magnates and bishops, Louis, prostrate upon a hair cloth before the altar, was compelled to read the form of confession drawn up by his enemies, in which he owned himself guilty of sacrilege,