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38 afterwards repeated by Charles in the Romance language, and even in German as far as the more important passages were concerned.

Briefly, it was a return to the status quo as it had been before the sudden stroke attempted by Louis. A fresh match was about to be played, the stake this time being the kingdom of Lothar II.

From about 860 to 870 the whole policy of the Carolingian kings turns mainly on the question of the king of Lorraine's divorce and the possible succession to his crown. In 855, Lothar had been compelled by his father to marry Theutberga, a maiden of noble family, sister of a lord named Hubert whose estates were situated on the upper valley of the Rhone, and who seems about this time to have been made by the Emperor governor "of the duchy between the Jura and the Alps" corresponding roughly to French Switzerland of to-day. The marriage was evidently arranged with the object of ensuring for the young king the support of a powerful family. But before it took place, Lothar had had a mistress named Waldrada, by whom he had children, and this woman seems to have acquired over him an extraordinary ascendency, which contemporaries, as a matter of course, attribute to the use of magic. From the very beginning of his reign, Lothar bent all his energy towards the single end of ridding himself, by any possible means, of the consort chosen by his father, and raising his former mistress to the title and rank of a legitimate wife. Theutberga had not borne an heir to Lothar and seems to have been considered incapable of doing so, although this was not used as a weapon against her by her adversaries. On the other hand, it was the consideration which determined the attitude of the other sovereigns and helped to make the question of the Lorraine divorce, it may almost be said, an international one. If Lothar were to die childless, it would mean the partition of his inheritance among his relations, practically between his two uncles, for his brother Charles, epileptic and near his end, was in no position to interfere, while Louis II, himself without an heir, was too much occupied in Southern Italy to be a very serious competitor.

Hostile measures against Theutberga had been taken almost at the very beginning of the new king's reign. He hurled at his wife a charge of incest with her brother Hubert. But a champion nominated by the queen submitted himself on her behalf to the Judgment of God by the ordeal of boiling water. The result was the solemn proclamation of Theutberga's innocence, and Lothar II was obliged to yield to the wishes of his nobles and take back his wife. Hubert, for his part, had revolted, and under the pretext of defending his sister was indulging in acts of brigandage in the upper valley of the Rhone. An expedition sent against him by the king of Lorraine had produced no results. Thus the cession made (859) by Lothar to his brother Louis II of the three dioceses of Geneva, Lausanne and Sion had been designed, quite as much to rid the kingdom of Lorraine of a turbulent noble as to conciliate