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32 who was already concerned about the succession to his crown. It was decided to guarantee to the children of any one of the three brothers who might happen to die, the peaceful possession of their father's kingdom. Letters or ambassadors were also ordered to be sent to the Northmen, the Bretons and the Aquitanians. But this latter resolution, save for an advance made to King Horic, remained nearly a dead letter. Lothar, who still cherished anger against Gilbert's suzerain, chose to leave him in the midst of the difficulties which pressed upon him, and even sought an alliance against him with Louis the German, his interviews with whom become very frequent during the next few years.

Nevertheless the position of Charles improved. The magnates of Aquitaine, ever inconstant, had abandoned Pepin II, almost to a man, and Charles had, as it were, set a seal upon his entrance into actual possession of the whole of the states which the treaty of 843 had recognised as his, by having himself solemnly crowned and anointed at Orleans on 6 June 848 by Ganelon (Wenilo), the Archbishop of Sens. Again, Gilbert had left Aquitaine and taken refuge at the court of Louis the German. There was no longer any obstacle to the reconciliation of Lothar with his youngest brother, which took place in a very cordial interview between the two sovereigns at Péronne (January 849). A little later, Louis the German, in his turn, had a meeting with Charles, at which the two kings mutually "recommended" their kingdoms and the guardianship of their children to one another, in case of the death of either. The result of all these private interviews was a general conference held at Meersen in the spring of 851 in order to buttress the somewhat shaky edifice of the concordia fratrum. The principles of brotherly amity and the duty of mutual help were again proclaimed, supplemented by a pledge given by the three brothers to forget their resentment for the past, and, in order to avoid any further occasions of discord, to refuse entrance into any one kingdom to such as had disturbed the peace of any other.

But these fair professions did little to alter the actual state of things, and the sovereigns pursued their intrigues against one another. Lothar tried to recommend himself to Charles by procuring for Hincmar the grant of the pallium. Louis the German, on the contrary, displayed his enmity to him by receiving into his dominions the disgraced Archbishop Ebbo, to whom he even gave the bishopric of Hildesheim. Meanwhile the Scandinavian invasions raged ever more fiercely in the Western Kingdom. In 851 the Danish followers of the sea-king Oscar, having devastated Aquitaine, pushed up the Seine as far as Rouen, pillaged Jumièges and Saint-Wandrille, and from thence made their way into the Beauvais country which they ravaged with fire and sword. Next year another fleet desisted from pillaging Frisia to sail up the Seine. Other hordes ascended the Loire, and in 853 burned Tours and its