Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/191

 The Disruption of Charlemagne's Empire 155 [I. STRUGGLES BETWEEN THE SONS OF Louis THE Pious (840) Louis [the German], the emperor's son, took pos- session of the part of the Empire lying beyond the Rhine as if it were his by right. He won the support of many East Franks by his prudent conduct, and marched through Alemannia to Frankfort. The emperor, learning this, was forced to return from Aquitaine, leaving his business there unfinished. He sent his brother Druogo, the archchaplain, Count Albert, and many others before him to guard the west bank of the Rhine; then he himself followed and celebrated Easter at Aix-la-Chapelle. About this time, night after night, a strange glow appeared in the air, in fashion like a beam, in the southeast, and another arising from the northwest. The two joined together and formed a cone and presented an appearance like clotted blood at the zenith. After Easter the emperor gathered an army and pursued his son through Thuringia up to the frontiers of the bar- barians. He drove him out of the imperial territory and forced him to make a difficult march homeward to Bavaria through the land of the Slavs. The emperor himself set all things in order in that region, and then returned to the royal town of Salz, and celebrated there the Rogation Days and the festival of our Lord's Ascension. On the very day before the Ascension of our Lord, i.e. on the twelfth of May, there was an eclipse of the sun at about the seventh and eighth hour so completely was the sun obscured that the stars were seen and the color of things on earth was changed. In these days the emperor fell ill and began to waste away. He was taken on a ship down the Main to Frank- fort, and from there after a few days to an island in the Rhine near Ingilenheim. His illness steadily increased upon him, and on the twentieth of June he ended his life. His body was brought to the city of Metz and buried with all due honor in the basilica of St. Arnulf the Confessor. Lothaire, who came from Italy too late [to see his father], was accepted by the Franks to rule over them in his father's 68. The death of Louis the Pious and the strife between his sons. (From the Annals ofFulda.) Lothaire the Fr.mksas their ruler.
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