as her favourite at court. Lothair and his brother Pippin joined the rebels, and after Judith had been sent into a convent and Bernard had fled to Spain, an assembly was held at Compiègne, when Louis was practically deposed and Lothair became the real ruler of the Empire. Sympathy was, however, soon aroused for the emperor, who was treated as a prisoner, and a second assembly was held at Nimwegen in October 830 when, with the concurrence of his sons Pippin and Louis, he was restored to power and Judith returned to court.
Further trouble between Pippin and his father led to the nominal transfer of Aquitaine from Pippin to his brother Charles in 831. The emperor’s plans for a division of his dominions then led to a revolt of his three sons. Louis met them in June 833 near Kolmar, but owing possibly to the influence of Pope Gregory IV., who took part in the negotiations, he found himself deserted by his supporters, and the treachery and falsehood which marked the proceedings gave to the place the name of Lügenfeld, or the “field of lies.” Judith, charged with infidelity, was again banished; Louis was sent into the monastery of St Medard at Soissons; and the government of the Empire was assumed by his sons. The emperor was forced to confess his sins, and declare himself unworthy of the throne, but Lothair did not succeed in his efforts to make his father a monk. Sympathy was again felt for Louis, and when the younger Louis had failed to induce Lothair to treat the emperor in a more becoming fashion, he and Pippin took up arms on behalf of their father. The result was that in March 834 Louis was restored to power at St Denis; Judith once more returned to his side and the kingdoms of Louis and Pippin were increased. The struggle with Lothair continued until the autumn, when he submitted to the emperor and was confined to Italy. To make the restoration more complete, a great assembly at Diedenhofen declared the deposition of Louis to have been contrary to law, and a few days later he was publicly restored in the cathedral of Metz. In December 838 Pippin died, and a new arrangement was made by which the Empire, except Bavaria, the kingdom of Louis, was divided between Lothair, now reconciled to his father, and Charles. The emperor was returning from suppressing a revolt on the part of his son Louis, provoked by this disposition, when he died on the 20th of June 840 on an island in the Rhine near Ingelheim. He was buried in the church of St Arnulf at Metz. Louis was a man of strong frame, who loved the chase, and did not shrink from the hardships of war. He was, however, easily influenced and was unequal to the government of the Empire bequeathed to him by his father. No sustained effort was made to ward off the inroads of the Danes and others, who were constantly attacking the borders of the Empire. Louis, who is also called Le Débonnaire, counts as Louis I., king of France.
See Annales Fuldenses; Annales Bertiniani; Thegan, Vita Hludowici; the Vita Hludowici attributed to Astronomus; Ermoldus Nigellus, In honorem Hludowici imperatoris; Nithard, Historiarum libri, all in the Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores, Bände i. and ii. (Hanover and Berlin, 1826 fol.); E. Mühlbacher, Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter den Karolingern (Innsbruck, 1881); and Deutsche Geschichte unter den Karolingern (Stuttgart, 1886); B. Simson, Jahrbücher des fränkischen Reichs unter Ludwig dem Frommen (Leipzig, 1874–1876); and E. Dümmler, Geschichte des ostfränkischen Reiches (Leipzig, 1887–1888). (A. W. H.*)
LOUIS II. (825–875), Roman emperor, eldest son of the emperor Lothair I., was designated king of Italy in 839, and taking up his residence in that country was crowned king at Rome by Pope Sergius II. on the 15th of June 844. He at once preferred a claim to the rights of an emperor in the city, which was decisively rejected; but in 850 he was crowned joint emperor at Rome by Pope Leo IV., and soon afterwards married his cousin, Engelberga, a daughter of King Louis the German, and undertook the independent government of Italy. He took the field against the Saracens; quashed some accusations against Pope Leo; held a diet at Pavia; and on the death of his father in September 855 became sole emperor. The division of Lothair’s dominions, by which he obtained no territory outside Italy, aroused his discontent, and in 857 he allied himself with Louis the German against his brother Lothair, king of Lorraine, and King Charles the Bald. But after Louis had secured the election of Nicholas I. as pope in 858, he became reconciled with his brother, and received some lands south of the Jura in return for assistance given to Lothair in his efforts to obtain a divorce from his wife, Teutberga. In 863, on the death of his brother Charles, Louis received the kingdom of Provence, and in 864 came into collision with Pope Nicholas I. over his brother’s divorce. The archbishops, who had been deposed by Nicholas for proclaiming this marriage invalid, obtained the support of the emperor, who reached Rome with an army in February 864; but, having been seized with fever, he made peace with the pope and left the city. In his efforts to restore order in Italy, Louis met with considerable success both against the turbulent princes of the peninsula and against the Saracens who were ravaging southern Italy. In 866 he routed these invaders, but could not follow up his successes owing to the want of a fleet. So in 869 he made an alliance with the eastern emperor, Basil I., who sent him some ships to assist in the capture of Bari, the headquarters of the Saracens, which succumbed in 871. Meanwhile his brother Lothair had died in 869, and owing to his detention in southern Italy he was unable to prevent the partition of Lorraine between Louis the German and Charles the Bald. Some jealousy between Louis and Basil followed the victory at Bari, and in reply to an insult from the eastern emperor Louis attempted to justify his right to the title “emperor of the Romans.” He had withdrawn into Benevento to prepare for a further campaign, when he was treacherously attacked in his palace, robbed and imprisoned by Adelchis, prince of Benevento, in August 871. The landing of fresh bands of Saracens compelled Adelchis to release his prisoner a month later, and Louis was forced to swear he would take no revenge for this injury, nor ever enter Benevento with an army. Returning to Rome, he was released from his oath, and was crowned a second time as emperor by Pope Adrian II. on the 18th of May 872. He won further successes against the Saracens, who were driven from Capua, but the attempts of the emperor to punish Adelchis were not very successful. Returning to northern Italy, he died, somewhere in the province of Brescia, on the 12th of August 875, and was buried in the church of St Ambrose at Milan, having named as his successor in Italy his cousin Carloman, son of Louis the German. Louis was an excellent ruler, of whom it was said “in his time there was great peace, because every one could enjoy his own possessions.”
See Annales Bertiniani, Chronica S. Benedicti Casinensis, both in the Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores, Bände i. and iii. (Hanover and Berlin, 1826 fol.); E. Mühlbacher, Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter den Karolingern (Innsbruck, 1881); Th. Sickel, Acta regum et imperatorum Karolinorum, digesta et enarrata (Vienna, 1867–1868); and E. Dümmler, Geschichte des ostfränkischen Reiches (Leipzig, 1887–1888). (A. W. H.*)
LOUIS III. (c. 880–928), surnamed the “Blind,” Roman emperor, was a son of Boso, king of Provence or Lower Burgundy, and Irmengarde, daughter of the emperor Louis II. The emperor Charles the Fat took Louis under his protection on the death of Boso in 887; but Provence was in a state of wild disorder, and it was not until 890, when Irmengarde had secured the support of the Bavarian king Arnulf and of Pope Stephen V., that Louis was recognized as king. In 900, after the death of the emperor Arnulf, he went to Italy to obtain the imperial crown. He was chosen king of the Lombards at Pavia, and crowned emperor at Rome in February 901 by Pope Benedict IV. He gained a temporary authority in northern Italy, but was soon compelled by his rival Berengar, margrave of Friuli, to leave the country and to swear he would never return. In spite of his oath he went again to Italy in 904, where he secured the submission of Lombardy; but on the 21st of July 905 he was surprised at Verona by Berengar, who deprived him of his sight and sent him back to Provence, where he passed his days in enforced inactivity until his death in September 928. He married Adelaide, possibly a daughter of Rudolph I., king of Upper Burgundy. His eldest son, Charles Constantine, succeeded to no more than the county of Vienne.
