Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/570

 Bald. 534 843. As a result of this agreement between Charles and Hludwig, Hlothar was driven back to Aix-la-Chapclle. He thence fled to Lyons, to be near his southern friends ; and, finally, finding himself completely overborne by their opposition, he made with them the famous Treaty of Verdun in 843, in which three kingdoms were distinctly marked off : France for Charles the Bald ; Germany for Ludwig the Bavarian; for the emperor Italy and a long narrow strip lying between Germany and France, a con ventional district, which a little later received from its lord, the second Hlothar, the conventional name of Lotharingia Charles or Lorraine. Charles the Bald had for his kingdom all Gaul the W est of the Scheldt, the Meuse, the Saone, and Rhone ; it ran down to the Mediterranean, and was thence bounded by the Pyrenees and the Atlantic. It included therefore the chief part of modern France. It was Charles the Bald also who allowed the county of Paris to become a part of the duchy of France, so that the dukes of France were also counts of Paris; from this arrangement sprang eventually the decision of the momentous question as to what city should become the capital of modern France. In this manner the magnificent empire of Charles the Great came to an end, and in its place arose the nations of Europe. Speaking of the year 841, Nithard tells us that throughout the breadth of France the utmost confusion and rapine oppressed the people ; in thirty years there had been five partitions of the Frankish empire, each marked with its own violence and misery ; and the condition of the inhabit ants, groaning under the ambitious foreign rule of quarrel some princes, was as bad as well could be. The time, however, was now coming in which the greater lords of Neustria began to forget their German interests and nature, and to move towards a national French life. At first their action was chiefly disruptive, aiming at a local territorial independence : lay lords and great bishops alike pushed their pretensions to the farthest point ; hostile to the imperial ideas of Germany, they had no sympathy with any national ideas for France. Nor is this strange, for France can hardly in any sense be said to have existed in their day. We have reached the time in which feudalism emerges from its earliest stages, and strives to lay the foundations of its independence. From the Treaty of Verdun in 843 to the accession of Hugh Capet in 987, France passes through a dreary and confused period of formation. Charles the Bald is a fit representative of such an age; he passed a long life sweeping together territories under his nominal sovereignty, and endeavouring to secure to himself the imperial dignity and the commanding position of his great namesake and grandfather:; and though he was at the outset king of Neustria, his interests lay far more outside than inside France; the instincts and sympathies of Charles, as of all his family, were German. His schemes and struggles, rewarded in the end with apparent success, for just before his death ho was crowned king of Italy and emperor, in reality were fatal to the Caroling dynasty. He bought his advancement first by subservience to tho greater clergy, and afterwards by grant ing to tho feudal lords the charter of their independence. After the Treaty of Verdun had apparently given to Charles the Bald undisputed lordship over the western portion of the empire, three states still resisted his authority : Brittany, which, under Nomenoe, asserted and secured her independence ; Septimania, which drove out his armies for a while ; and Aquitaine, in which the vices of Pippin gave Charles a footing, and made a way to his success. For several years his whole energies were engaged in these bootless struggles, while at tho same time his coasts were being ravaged by the Northmen. He was obliged to pay a heavy scot before he could deliver at one [HISTORY. time the rich valley of the Sonmie, at another the walls of 843- Paris herself, from their devastations. In a capitulary of 877, the last year of his reign, we have the levy of a contribution in order to buy them off from the Seine. In 855 the death of the emperor Hlothar was the signal for a fresh division of lands, in which Charles got his share in Lorraine and the kingdom of Provence. His fortunes, however, scarcely mended ; overshadowed by nobles and bishops, his tenure of Jiis kingly throne was ever precarious. The great lords, seeing in him a tendency towards resistance of their claims, called in German aid to dispossess him ; and Ludwig the German came to their help. The inhabitants of Gaul, roused by the appearance en their soil of these German antagonists, rose and drove them back to the Rhine. Charlea seized the opportunity of strengthening himself, as he hoped, by appealing to tho church ; the church by its spokesman, the great Hincmar of Rheims, replied by accepting the call, by declaring her authority over kings, and by tracing the lines of episcopal and royal power : &quot; If kings rule after God s will, they are subject to none; if they be great sinners, then is their judgment in the hands of the bishops.&quot; Hincmar, in these words, stretched wide the rule by which the clergy had claimed to exercise judicial functions in the case of ordinary malefactors. And thus the clergy rewarded themselves for having saved Charles from the hands of the nobles and the Germans. The reins of power were now entirely left in Hincmar s hands, and the dreary capitularies of the reign bear evidence in every page of the overwhelming influence of the clergy. Not satisfied with his supremacy in church and state, the great arch bishop pressed forward into philosophical and theological controversy, and took his share in those discussions which heralded the incoming of scholasticism. He opposed the views and influence of John Scotus Erigena, the head of the palace school of Charles, and may be perhaps said to have given that direction to thought and speculation which marks in the main the course of the whole philo sophy of the schools. Towards the end of his reign there w r as only one prince, Ludwig the German, who shared with him the vast empire of Charles the Great, And in 875 on the death of Ludwig II., emperor and king of Italy, a handful of bishops and counts assembled at Pavia offered the imperial crown to both these princes. Charles arriving first was forthwith proclaimed &quot;protector, lord, and king of Italy&quot; by the pope. In the next year Ludwig the German also died, and Charles, not content with the imperial dignity, which he already possessed, nor with the ample extent of the terri tories nominally subject to him, desired to restore the old imperial unity, and to obtain the crown of Germany in addition to those of the west and south. The sons of Ludwig naturally resisted ; and then, in order to secure the hearty aid of his followers, he held the diet of Quiersy- sur-Oise (Carisiacum) in which was drawn up the great capitulary sometimes styled tho Magna Charta of French feudalism. Beneath a cumbrous covering of words, and connecting the hereditary succession of his own son with his large concessions to his nobles, Charles in fact con ceded hereditary rights to all freeholders. Any lord who should desire to renounce the world might leave his benefices and honours to his son, or otherwise as might seem good to him; and any lord whose hold on his worldly goods was brought to an end by death might leave his dignity to his son (Baluze, Capitularies, ii. p. 259), and thus in definite terms the hereditary usage of centuries became hereditary right. Hitherto, in Franco at least, a fiefholder held at his lord s pleasure, and was, in theory, liable to deprivation at any time ; henceforth, he was as secure in law as in fact, and could transmit his lands