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50 their Frankish deliverers, and their prince, Adelchis, feared that the Emperor might take advantage of his success to assert his sovereignty over Southern Italy. In consequence of his hostility, he laid an ambush which threw the Emperor a prisoner into his hands. Adelchis extorted from his captive a promise not to re-enter Southern Italy. A report of the Emperor's death was even current in Gaul and Germany. But Louis II, being quickly set at liberty, obtained from the Pope a dispensation from the oath he had sworn, and renewed the campaign next year (873), without however having attained any advantage. On 12 August 875 he was suddenly carried off by death.

Such was the state of affairs in Italy at the moment when Charles the Bald and Louis the German were preparing to dispute with one another the heritage left by their nephew. The succession question which presented itself, was, it is true, a complicated one. The dead Emperor left only a daughter. The territories which he had ruled, ought, it would seem, to have been divided by agreement between his two uncles. But if the imperial dignity had, since the time of Charlemagne, been considered inalienable from his family, no rule of succession had yet been established, even by custom, which could be applied to it. In practice, it seemed to be bound up with the possession of Italy, and to require as indispensable conditions the election of the candidate, at least in theory, by the Roman people, and his consecration at the hands of the Pope. Now Charles the Bald had on his side the sympathy of John VIII, who claimed that he was only carrying out the wishes already expressed by Nicholas I himself. Charles has been accused of having entangled the Pope by means of offerings and grants. In reality, what John VIII most desired seems to have been a strong and energetic Emperor capable of taking up the task to which Louis II had devoted himself, and of defending the Holy See against the Saracens. Rightly or wrongly, he believed that he had found his ideal in Charles, who was, in addition, well-educated and a lover of letters, and had besides for a long time given his attention to Italy, whither he had been summoned by a party of the magnates at the time of the false report of the death of Louis II. His possession, too, of Provence and of the Viennois, made it possible for him to interfere beyond the Alps more readily than his brother of Germany could do. He took action, besides, with promptness and decision. Hardly had the news of his nephew's death reached him at Douzy near Sedan than he summoned an assembly of magnates at Ponthion near Châlons to nominate his comrades on the expedition. He crossed the Great St Bernard, and had scarcely arrived in Italy when he was met by the envoys of the Pope bearing an invitation to him to come to Rome to be crowned. Louis the German was not inclined to see his brother go to this length without a protest. He despatched his two sons in succession beyond the Alps with an army. Charles the Fat was immediately obliged to beat a retreat. Carloman, more fortunate,