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26 to the prejudice of my brother Charles." Thereupon Charles repeated the same formula in the Teutonic tongue used by his brother's subjects. Finally, the two armies made the following declaration each in their own language. "If Louis (or Charles) observes the oath which he has sworn to his brother Charles (or Louis) and if Charles (or Louis) my lord, for his part, infringe his oath, if I am not able to dissuade him from it, neither I nor anyone whom I can hinder shall lend him support against Louis (or Charles)." The two brothers then spent several days together at Strasbourg, prodigal of outward tokens of their amity, offering each other feasts and warlike sports, sleeping at night under each other's roofs, spending their days together and settling their business in common. In the month of March they advanced against Lothar, and by way of Worms and Mayence reached Coblence, where the Emperor had collected his troops. His army, panic-stricken, disbanded without even attempting to defend the passage of the Moselle. Louis and Charles entered Aix, which Lothar abandoned, to make his way to Lyons through Burgundy. His two brothers followed him. Having reached Châlon-sur-Saône they received envoys from the Emperor acknowledging his offences against them, and proposing peace on condition that they granted him a third of the Empire, with some territorial addition on account of the imperial title which their father had bestowed on him, and of the imperial dignity which their grandfather had joined to the kingship of the Franks. Lothar was still surrounded by numerous supporters. On the other hand, the magnates, fatigued by years of war, were anxious for peace. Louis and Charles accepted in principle the proposals of their elder brother.

On 15 June an interview took place between the three sovereigns, on an island in the Saône near Mâeon, which led to the conclusion of a truce. Louis made use of it to crush the insurrection of a league of Saxon peasants, the Stellinga, which the Emperor had secretly encouraged. In the month of November the truce was renewed, and a commission of a hundred and twenty members having met at Coblence, charged with the duty of arranging the partition of the kingdoms among the three brothers, the division was definitively concluded at Verdun, in the month of August 843. The official document has been lost, but it is nevertheless possible, from the information given by the chroniclers, to state its main provisions. The Empire was divided from East to West into three sections, and "Lothar received the middle kingdom," i.e. Italy and the region lying between the Alps, the Aar and the Rhine on the East (together with the Ripuarian counties on the lower right bank of the latter river) and the Rhone, the Saône and the Scheldt on the West. These made up a strip of territory about a thousand miles in length by one hundred and thirty in breadth, reaching from the North Sea to the Duchy of Benevento. Louis received the countries beyond the Rhine, except Frisia which was left to