Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/499

Rh harles he Fat. ' orth- iien. rniilf. LATER CAROLI.'GS.] days in a monastery. But his successor, Suatopluk, was not less energetic, and Louis was never able to overinaster him. The emperor Lotliair’s successor in the empire was his eldest son Louis II., who received as his kingdom the 1-‘raukisli possessions in Italy. After his death Charles the lald adroitly managed to secure the imperial crown. This happened in 875, almost immediately before the death of Louis the German. Having succeeded so easily in regard t) the supreme title, Charles fancied he might be able to unite the whole empire under his rule. But Louis had divided Germany between his three sons, Carlman, Louis, and Charles ; and the second of these met Charles the Bald on the ﬁeld of Andernacli, and by a decided victory convinced the West Franks that it was useless to hope for dominion east of the Rhine. The same son of Louis the German forced Charles the Bald to give up such portions of Lorraine as had been ceded to him by the treaty of Mersen, so that the right of possessing the whole of this important terri- tory, which included the best part of what had been Austrasia, was vindicated for the Germans. The two eldest sons of Louis soon died, and the kingdom passed into the hands of the youngest, Charles the Fat, a prince of indolent habits and feeble mind. He crossed the Alps, however, and was crowned emperor ; and, as the N orthmen were at this time tormenting the West-Fraiikisli kingdom, and no descendant of Charles the Bald was ﬁt to cope with them, Charles the Fat was invited to become king of the Vest Fraiiks. He thus ruled, with the exception of Burgundy, which at this time became an independent state, the whole empire of Charles the Great ; but the mighty fabric could not exist without the genius which had built it up. In Germany also the Northmen had made themselves more and more troublesome. Time after time their skiffs had pene- trated far up the Rhine ; they had plundered Cologne and Treves, and fed their horses over the grave of the great Charles himself, in his own beautiful basilica. His degen- i-rate great-grandson adopted the policy of buying them off, and when he reached Paris, to the disgust of his subjects, he pursued the same course. It happened that his brother Carlinan had left an illegitimate son, Arnulf, whom he had made ruler of Cariiitliia, a country lying to the east of Bavaria. This young noble, who inherited the undaunted spirit of his forefathers, was indignant at the cowardice of his uncle; and when the latter, in 887, summoned an assembly in Trihur, Arnulf, instead of obeying the summons, marched at the head of a powerful army against the emperor. Deserted even by his ministers, and unable to offer the smallest resistance, Charles was dethroned, and in a week or two afterwards died; and Arnulf, notwithstanding his illegitimacy, became king. For some time after this, Ger- many was still called East Francia, and the western kingdom West Francia, but they never again had a common ruler ; they were now in all respects separate, independent states. The empire of Charles the Great had fallen to pieces. Arnulf, following the example of Charles the Fat, went to tome and was made emperor. He could exercise but little authority in Italy, however, and soon returned. In 890 the Northmen desolated the valleys of the Meuse and the_)[oselle, and Arnulf, instead of buying them off, sent against them a powerful army. As it was defeated, he hiinself took the command in the following year. The Ioi‘tlii_nen occupied a strongly entrenched camp near Louvain; and Arnulf’s force, consisting mainly of cavalry, seemed to be quite powerless. Leaping from his horse, he inluced his men to ﬁght beside him on foot; and they were so stimulated by his _valour that for the ﬁrst time the dreaded enemy ﬂed, leaving thousands of bodies on the ﬁeld. . They never returned in such numbers as to be again a national peril. The emperor had also to wage war with GERMANY 481 the Moravians, but his efforts here were not crowned with 875-911. like success. By this time the ﬁerce and warlike Magyars had become a terror to eastern Europe, and it occurred to Arnulf to ask for their alliance. They gladly assented; and with their help he overcame one of the three reigning sons of Suatopluk, and contrived to detach from Moravia the Boliemians, the Sorabi, and other Slavs whom Suatopluk had joined to his kingdom. But at the time of his death, in 899, he had not succeeded in breaking up the state estab- lislied by this powerful warrior and his predecessor. During the nominal reign of Louis the Child——the last of Louis the Carolingian dynasty in Germany (899—91l)—the G crman the people passed through one of the darkest periods of their history; for when the Magyars heard that Arnulf had been succeeded by a child, they swept into Germany in vast numbers, and fearful was the havoc they caused in every part of the kingdom. At such a time as this it happened that there was no leader around whom the nation could rally ; it was virtually defenceless, and year after year savage hordes returned, bearing away with them as much plunder as they could carry, and driving before them as many prisoners as they could control. Where the North- men had whipped with cords, these barbarians lashed with scorpions. During the wars with the Magyars, the Northmen, and the Slavs, feudalism made rapid advances in Germany. Even in the days of Louis the German and Arnulf it was impossible for the sovereign to protect at all times every part of the kingdom. The people themselves were obliged to rise against their enemies, and, as in old times, they appointed herzogs or dukes for special warlike expeditions. These leaders, being chosen from the ancient ducal families, naturally began to think of restoring the power of which their fathers had been deprived ; and, as there never was more urgent need of strong local rulers, they found no great diﬂiculty in gratifying their ambition. The ﬁrst reigning duke of whom we hear is Otto of Saxony, a country not only liable, like the rest of Germany, to the attacks of the Magyars, but specially exposed to the Scandinavian sea-robbers and the northern Slavs. This duke ruled over both Saxony and Thiiringia. Soon afterwards we hear also of dukes in Bavaria, in Swabia, in Lorraine, and last of all, in Franconia. Having unusual opportunities of acquiring new lands, the dukes increased their power by granting them as ﬁefs to vassals on whom they could depend; and many independent landowners were glad to obtain their protection by offering them homage. Multi- tudes of the liiinibler class of freeinen either were forced to change the tenure of their possessions into a feudal tenure, or did so in order to escape from still greater evils. Thus, when Louis the Child died, the feudal tenure of land was the prevailing system in nearly all parts of the country. Even those who held their offices and lands im- mediately of the monarch, like the dukes themselves, might still, in theory, be deprived of both; but in reality they asserted almost complete independence, rendering only such service to their lord as he could force from them, or as suited their convenience. The royal authority, nominally great, had become but a shadow of the authority exercised by the early Carolingian kings. Had Germany had no powerful external enemy, it is probable that it would now have lost the slight measure of unity to which it had attained. While Louis lived, the dukes were virtually kings in their duchies ; and their natural tend- ency would have been to make themselves absolute rulers. But, threatened as they were by the Magyars, with the Slavs and N ortlimen always ready to take advantage of their weak- ness, they could not afford to do without a central gove1'i1- nient. Accordingly the nobles assembled at Forchheim, and by the advice of Otto, the aged duke o}f;Saxony, Conrad '. —- 61 Child. M agyars. Growth of feudal- ism.