Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/498

Rh 480 (:E1{3[;.4'1' [uIsTor.‘r. 317-370, to secure the succession, Bavaria was given to his second I that the people should slowly acquire a sense of common Louis the Pious. son Louis; the other parts of Gcrma.ny fell to his eldest son Lothair (lllothar), who received also the rest of the empire, except Aquitania, which was the portion of Pippin, the youngest. This arrangement lasted until the emperor fell completely under the power of his second wife, Judith. a Bavarian princess, who intrigued incessantly to obtain for her son Charlcs—afterwards “Charles the Bald ”——a position similar to that of his half brothers. The emperor at last, at the expense of his son Lothair, marked off an important territory for this inconvenient child. In the wars which followed, Louis the Bavarian ﬁrmly maintained his rights ; but he disapproved the cruel harshness with which his father was treated by Lothair. In Germany the emperor was highly esteemed,— especially in Saxony, where he softened the rigorous system introduced by Charles, by sanctioning as far as possible a return to ancient popular institutions. The result was that when he was virtually deposed by Lothair, and after- wards not only deposed but lnuniliated almost beyond endurance, the Germans warmly supported Louis the Bavarian in insisting that the emperor should be restored to imperial rights. For his services on these occasions Louis received extensive additions of territory, and had he con- tinued to be fairly treated, he would have been the most effectual support of his father’s power. But the spirit of the gentle-hearted emperor was broken by misfortune, and when Pippin of Aquitania died, he was easily persuaded by Judith, who had come to an understanding with Lothair, to sanction a division of the empire by which his son in Germany would have been conﬁned strictly to his original possession of Bavaria. Louis instantly revolted; and it was in marching against him that the emperor fell sick and died, in 810, on a small island on the Rhine opposite Ingelheim. The last words of the dying sovereign were a message of forgiveness to his rebellious son. Lothair at once assumed the imperial dignity, and showed that he intended to demand the complete submission of his brothers, Louis and Charles. They combined against him, and in the battle of Fontenay, in 84-], after fearful slaughter, defeated him. The armies of the allied brothers soon after- wards met in Strasburg, where they swore to be true to each other, Louis taking the oath, so as to be understood by the army of Charles, in a language in which we find the beginnings of modern French, Charles in a German dialect. Tl'€3i._'Of In 843 the treaty of Verdun was signed. By this treaty Verdun. Begin- ning of German l..n:dom Lothair retained the title of emperor, and received, in addi- tion to the Italian territory of the Franks, a long narrow kingdom, stretching from the Mediterranean up through the valleys of the Rhone and the Rhine to the North Sea. This kingdom was called Lotharingia, a name afterwards confined to the northern part of it along the left bank of the Rhine. To the west of Lotharingia was the kingdom of Charles, which included the greater part of what is now France. Louis received most of the German lands to the east of the Rhine, with the towns and sees of Mainz, Worms, and Spires, on the western bank. Nothing was further from the intention of the brothers than finally to break up the Frankish state by this division. In relation to the outer world the empire was still considered a single power, as the kingdom had been after the death of Chlodwig, more than three centuries before. And, after a time, it was for a brief period reunited under one head. Still it is not an arbitrary impulse that has led historians to ﬁx upon 843 as the date of the real beginning of the German as well as of the French kingdom. Although it can hardly be said that a true national life had yet revealed itself in Germany, at least the foundations of national life had been laid. For the first time Germany was ruled by a king who reigned nowhere else, and it could not but be interests. .l[('(f(”c’ .l[((fti(t l'(ll P(’7'l'Uvf. Keen animosity soon revealed itself betvecu Louis and Charles the B.dd, and on one occasion when the former, accepting the invitation of certain 'est—Frankish nobles, rashly invaded his brother's territory, he was made prisoner. He escaped without dishonour only by the intercession of Lothair 1I., the emperor Lothair's second son, who, after his father's death, had received the greater part, and ultimately the whole, of Lothair’s kingdom to the north of Italy. When Lothair II. died in 869, Charles the Bald pounced upon his territory; but Louis the German had naturally something to say to this seizure of the whole prize, and in 870 the rival brothers signed the treaty of Mcrsen, by which Louis beca111e possessed of most of Lotharingia or Lorraine. Germany at this time assumed very nearly the proportions which it maintained during the Middle Ages. On the cast its b')u'ndaries were the Elbe and the Saale ; to the west it reached to and included the valleys of the Mouse and the Mosellc, taking in, among others, the important towns and dioceses of Utrecht, Aix—la-Chapelle, Metz, Strasburg, and Basel. Francouia, which reached eastward from the Rhine through the valleys of the Neckar and the Main to the Saale, and extended also a little to the west of the Rhine, occupied the central position, and, as the home of the Franks, was the most important division of the kingdom. To the north and 11ortl1—east of it were Saxony and Thur- ingia; to the south, Alemaunia, or, as it now begin to be called, Swabia; and to the cast of Swnlvia, in the valley of the Inn, Bavaria. There were five {1l‘('ltI)l.<ll(|1ll'lCS_., those of Mainz, Treves, Cologne, Salzburg, and Bremen. Louis, who was on the whole the worthiest of the grandsons of Charles the Great, ruled his kingdom vigor- ously and eﬁicicntly. During his reign the Frankish empire was vexed throughout nearly its whole extent by the Northmen, whom the fame of Charles the Great had held in awe, but who now swept the coasts of northern, southern, and western Europe with persistent fury. The East—Frankish kingdom was, however, much less troubled at this time than the kingdom of the West Fra.nks; the main evil with which Louis had to contend was the arrogance of his Slavonic neighbours. Exactly to the cast of Frauconia, from the Saale to the Oder, were the Sorabi, and to the north of them, between the Elbe and the Oder, the Wiltzi and Abotrites; while along the Baltic coast, as far as the Yistula, in what is now Pomerania, were the “ends. To the south of the Sorabi, behind the Bohemian Forest, were the Czechs of Bohemia and Moravia. All these Slavonic tribes Charles the Great had either thoroughly subdued or made tributary; and of course Louis the German claimed supremacy over them. But it was hard to make his claims good. While he was a very young ruler, a vigorous duke—Moimir——-acquirul a position of great power among the Moravians. Soon after the signing of the treaty of Verdun, Louis, becoming alarmed at the growing inﬂuence of this chief, advanced against him, and put in his place a chief named Rastislaus, on whose allegiance he thought he could rely. But on his way back he was defeated by the Bohemians, who were on good terms with the Moravian:-'. From this time the Moravians were a source of incessant anxiety to him. ‘tastislaus extended his kingdom far to the cast, and formed alliances with the Bulgarians and even with the Byzantine emperor; at the same time he stirred up the Bohemians and the Soral‘-i against Louis, and built strong fortresses on his western frontier. This gallant chief, after much fighting, at last fell into the hands of his enemies, who put out his eyes, and caused him to end his Louis the G crmal N cw liour.:l- arics. Slavs.