Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/29

Rh LOUIS 17 appointed. As the representative of national independence, Louis might have made himself one of the most popular of the emperors, but he excited bitter jealousies by his grasping and unscrupulous disposition. By his marriage with Margaret, the sister of Count William of Holland, he secured Holland, Zealand, Friesland, and Hainault ; and he obtained the mastery of Tyrol by separating the heiress, Margaret Maultasch, from her husband, a son of John, the powerful king of Bohemia, and making her the wife of his own son Louis, to whom (in 1322) he had granted the march of Brandenburg. The enemies he thus created were reinforced by Pope Clement VI., who not only excom municated him again, but (in 1346) persuaded a party of the electors to appoint a new king. Their choice fell on Charles, margrave of Moravia, the son of King John of Bohemia, who at once made an unsuccessful attempt to recover Tyrol, The outbreak of a new civil war was prevented by the sudden death of Louis at a bear hunt near Munich, on the llth of October 1347. The conflict between the papacy and the empire was practically closed during the reign of Louis, and he marked an epoch by his encouragement of the cities in opposition to the princes and nobles. See Marmert, Kaiser Ludwig IV., 1812 ; Fr. von Weccli, Kaiser Ludwig der Baier und Konig Johann von Bohmcn, 1860 ; and DiJbner, Die Ausciimndersctzung zwischcn Ludwig IV. dem Baicr und Friedrich dcm Schoncn von Ocstcrrcich, 1875. LOUIS THE GERMAN, son of the emperor Louis I., was born in 804. In the first partition of the empire in 817 he received Bavaria, Bohemia, Carinthia, and the subject territories on his eastern frontier. Displeased by later schemes of partition in favour of his half-brother Charles, he associated himself with his brothers Lothair and Pippin against the emperor, and he was in the field in defence of his rights when his father died. After the emperor s death in 840, Louis and Charles united against Lothair, whom they defeated in the battle of Fontenay, and in 843 Louis received by the treaty of Verdun the whole of Germany to the east of the Rhine, with Mainz, Spires, and Worms on the left bank. He was a wise and vigorous ruler, but his forces were inadequate to protect the northern part of his kingdom against the Norsemen, and he was not always successful in his wars with Slavonic tribes. In 858 he invaded West Francia, which he hoped to unite with East Francia, his own state ; but Charles the Bald proved to be stronger than Louis had supposed, and he was obliged to retreat. When Lothair of Lorraine died in 8G9, his king dom was seized by Charles, who caused himself to be crowned at Metz ; but in the following year, by the treaty of Mersen, the eastern half of the country was ceded to Louis. Louis expected to receive the imperial crown after the death of the emperor Louis II. Charles, however, outwitted him, and Louis was attempting to avenge this supposed wrong when he died at Frankfort on August 28, 876. East Francia and West Francia were again united under Charles the Fat; but, as Louis was the first sovereign who ruled over the Germans, and over no other Western people, he is generally considered the founder of the German kingdom. See Diimmler, Gcsckichte dcs Ostfrankisclicn Reichs, 1862. LOUIS I., king of France, surnamed Le Debonnaire or the Pious. See FRANCE, vol. ix. p. 533 ; GERMANY, vol. x. p. 480 ; and Louis I., emperor, supra. LOUIS II., surnamed Le Begue or the Stammerer, the sou of Charles I. (&quot; The Bald &quot;) by Irmentrud of Orleans, and the grandson of Louis the Pious, was born on November 1, 846. On the death of his elder brother Charles, the second son of Charles the Bald, he was con secrated king of Aquitania in 867, and ten years afterwards he succeeded his father, being crowned by Hincmar of Piheims under the title of &quot; king of the French, by the mercy of God and the election of the people &quot; (December 8, 877). In the following year (September 7) he availed himself of the presence of Pope John VIII. at Troyes to obtain a fresh consecration. He died at Compi^gne, after a feeble and ineffectual reign of eighteen months, on April 10, 879. LOUIS III., son of the preceding by Ansgarde, daughter of Count Hardouin of Brittany, was born about the year 863, and in 879 was designated by his father sole heir to the French throne. It was decided among the nobles, however, that the inheritance should be divided between Louis and his younger brother Carloman, the former receiving Neustria, or all France north of the Loire, and the latter Aquitania and Burgundy. On the Loire and elsewhere the two brothers inflicted several defeats on the Northmen (879-881) ; but in 882 Louis succumbed to the fatigues of war, leaving his inheritance to Carloman. LOUIS IV., surnamed D Outremer (Transmarinus), son of Charles III. (&quot;The Simple&quot;) and grandson of Louis II., was born in 921. In consequence of the disasters which befell his father in 922, Louis was taken by his mother Odgiva, sister of Athelstan, to England, where his boy hood was spent, a circumstance to which he owes his surname. On the death of Raoul or Rodolph of Burgundy, who had been elected king in place of Charles, the choice of Hugh the Great, count of Paris, and the other nobles, fell upon Louis, who was accordingly brought over the Channel and consecrated in 936. His de facto sovereignty, however, was confined to the countship of Laon. In 939 he became involved in a struggle with Otto I. (&quot;The Great&quot;) of Germany about Lorraine, which had transferred its allegiance to him ; the victory remained at last with tha emperor, who married his sister Gerberga to Louis. After the death of William Longsword, duke of Normandy, Louis endeavoured to strengthen his influence in the duchy by obtaining possession of the person of Richard the infant heir, but a series of intrigues resulted only in his own captivity at Rouen in 944, from which he was not released in the following year until he had agreed to surrender Laon to his powerful vassal Hugh the Great. By the interposition of Otto, the brother-in-law of Louis, Hugh, who for some years had effectually resisted both the carnal resources of the empire and the spiritual weapons of the church, was at last persuaded to restore Laon. The last years of this reign were marked by repeated Hungarian invasions of France. Louis died in 954, and was succeeded by his son Lothaire. LOUIS V., Le Faineant, son of Lothaire and grandson of Louis IV., the last of the Carolingian dynasty, was born in 966, succeeded Lothaire in March 986, and died in May 987. He was succeeded by Hugh Capet. LOUIS VI. , surnamed Le Gros, L Eveille&quot;, and Le Batailleur, the son of Philip I. of France and Bertha of Holland, was born about 1078, was associated with his father in the government in 1100, and succeeded him in 1108. For some account of his character, and of the events of his reign, see FRANCE, vol. ix. pp. 538, 539. He died on August 1, 1 137. LOUIS VII., Le Jeune and Le Pieux, eon of Louis VI., was born in 1120, and was associated with his father on the death of his elder brother Philip in 1131, being crowned at Rheims on October 25 by Pope Innocent II. He succeeded to the undivided sovereignty in 1137, the news of his father s death reaching him as he was engaged at Poitiers in the festivities connected with his unlucky marriage to Eleanor of Aquitania. In 1141 he made an unsuccessful attempt to assert his rights as duke of Aquitania over the countship of Toulouse, and in 1142 he fell into a vehement quarrel with Pope Innocent II., who XV. 3