181 



CHARLES II. 



CHARLKS V. 



182 



possessed all the countries now comprehended in France (except 

 Alsace, Lorraine, and a part of Burgundy) and Italy. But he was not 

 secure from attack : the Northmen, though their ravages had some- 

 what slackened, continued to infest the coasts and rivers ; and Louis, 

 irritated by the retreat of his sons from Italy, attacked France (876), 

 before Charles had returned from Italy, but upon his return he 

 retreated. The death of Louis the same year offered new allurement 

 to the ambition of Charles, who prepared forthwith to attack Louis of 

 Saxony, one of the sons of the deceased prince and heir to one part of 

 his dominions. The troops of Charles were defeated (876), and in the 

 following year Charles was driven out of Italy by Karlomann, another 

 of the sons of Louis, and ended his days at a place called Brios, in the 

 neighbourhood of Mount Cenia in the Alps. He died in 877, at the 

 age of fifty-four, having reigned thirty-seven years from the time of his 

 father's death. 



Charles experienced much trouble in his family : the rebellion of hia 

 sons Louis (who succeeded him, and is known in French history as 

 Louis le Begue) and Charles has been noticed. His fourth sou, 

 Carloman, whom he had brought up in a cloister, a life quite unsuited 

 to his turbulent genius, gave him much trouble by his disobedience ; 

 but the unhappy youth was at last punished by the loss of his eyes, 

 an infliction which he did not long survive. The pope, Adrian IL, 

 supported the rebellious prince, aud addressed to his father a letter 

 marked by arrogance as yet unparalleled in the feats of papal assump- 

 tion. The king's reply was calm and dignified ; but the honour of it 

 is probably due rather to Hincmar, who wrote it, than to the prince 

 in whose name it was written. Charles was twice married ; his first 

 wife was Hermentrude, daughter of Eudes, count of Orleans; hia 

 second Richilde, daughter of Beuve, count of Ardennes, and sister 

 of Richard, duke of Bourgogne and of Boson, afterwards king of 

 Prov 



CHA RLES II., known as Charles le Gros, or the Fat, was the son 

 of Louis le Qermanique, and by consequence nephew of Charles le 

 Chaure. He was born about 832, and, upon the death of his father in 

 876, had inherited a portion of hia dominions, which was designated 

 the kingdom of Suabia, and included Suabia, Switzerland, and Alsace. 

 By the death of Lia brother Carloman in 880, he acquired the kingdom 

 of Italy, and was crowned at Rome, by the pope, emperor of the Weat, 

 about the end of the same year or the beginning of the next. In 882 

 he obtained the kingdom of Saxony by the death of his other brother, 

 Louis of Saxony, and the crown of France by the death of Carloman 

 in 884. He thus reunited under one sceptre the dominions of Charle- 

 magne, with the exception of that part of Spain which lies between 

 the Pyrenees and the Ebro, and the country between the Rhone and 

 the Alpa, which had been formed into a kingdom by the successful 

 ambition of Bason, and perhaps Bretagne and Qascogne. Charles 

 however showed an utter incapacity of governing the extensive domi- 

 nions thus acquired. The Northmen ravaged his coasts ; one of their 

 chieftains, Godfrid, who had previously extorted from the cowardice 

 of the empire the sovereignty of Friedland, began to stir again ; 

 and Hugues, whom the church stigmatised as illegitimate, son of 

 Lothaire II., desolated Lorraine, which he claimed as hia inheritance. 

 Charles determined to remove by treachery thoae whom he dared not 

 face in battle ; and at a conference appointed by him, Godfrid waa 

 assassinated, and Hugues made prisoner, deprived of bis eyea, and 

 shut up in a convent. 



In 885-86, Paris was besieged by the Northmen, and bravely defended 

 for more than a year by Eudes, count of Paria, son of Robert le Fort, 

 count of Anjou and duke of France, and two ecclesiastics, and it was 

 not until it waa reduced to the last extremity that Charles advanced 

 to its relief. He entered Paris with his army, but not venturing to 

 encounter the Northmen, who had concentrated their forces, he signed 

 a treaty, by virtue of which he paid to the barbariana a consider- 

 able sum, to engage them to quit the environs of Paria and transfer 

 the war more into the interior of France, to a country as yet little 

 injured. 



The charge which he made in 887 against his chancellor Liutward, 

 bishop of Vercelli, tended by its consequences to increase the contempt 

 into which Charles had fallen, and he waa compelled to resign the 

 imperial crown to his nephew Arnolph, an illegitimate son of Karlo- 

 mann, king of Bavaria and Italy. He survived hia deposition only a 

 few weeks, dying early in the year 883 at a castle named Indinga, in 

 Suabia. 



CHARLES III., le Simple, was son of Louis II. le Begue, or the 

 Stutterer, by Adelaide, who claimed to be the second wife of that 

 monarch ; but her title to be regarded as hia wife depended upon the 

 validity of hia first marriage. In the reigns of Louis III. and Carlo- 

 man, the issue of the first marriage of Louis II., she was regarded as 

 his concubine, and consequently Charles was looked upon as illegi- 

 timate ; but whatever defects there might be in his claim, they were 

 disregarded when the discontented nobles thought it right to set him 

 up in opposition to Eudes, count of Paris, who had been elected king 

 <jf France upon the death of Charles le Gros. By these malcontents 

 he waa elected king at Reims in 893, and crowned by the archbishop 

 of that city ; but his youth (he waa only fourteen) and the weakness 

 of hia character iucapaciated him from maintaining himself against 

 4. Ou the death of that prince, Charles, who had experienced 

 various changes of fortune, was elected king in 898, without any 



competitor, but over a circumscribed territory and with very limited 

 power. 



The reign of Charles was marked by a signal event, the cession to 

 the Northmen, who, under their chief Rollon or Rollo, had committed 

 ;reat ravages, of that part of France called from them Normaudie. 

 This cession, however justly it may be ascribed to the weakness or the 

 cowardice of Charles, waa not in itself unwise ; the population of the 

 province was replenished by an infusion of warlike inhabitants, and 

 the activity and energy of the new settlers recovered the district from 

 the desert state to which their previous ravages had reduced it. By 

 the treaty in which the cession was made, Charles agreed to give his 

 own daughter in marriage to Rollo, while Rollo aud his barbarous 

 followers consented to become Christians. The treaty was ratified at 

 a meeting near the river Epte ; but when Rollo was required to do 

 homage to Charles as his sovereign by kissing his foot, he refused, 

 and deputed the duty to one of hia followers, who performed his part 

 so roughly as to overset the king : neither Charles nor his nobles 

 ventured however to resent the insult. 



Upon the decease of Louis, king of Germany, the nobles of Lorraine 

 bestowed the sovereignty of that country upon Charles, while the rest 

 of the Germans elected Conrad to the imperial crown. Wars with his 

 vassals, and especially with Henry, duke of Saxony, prevented Conrad 

 from vigorously attacking Charles; but when the above-mentioned 

 Henry came to the throne, he recovered a portion of Lorraine for the 

 imperial crown. The remainder of Charles's reign was unfortunate. 

 The Hungarians ravaged hia dominions (919), and his powerful and 

 malcontent nobles excited internal troubles. Charles managed to 

 protract his downfall for a year or two ; but at last his subjects, 

 irritated by the favour he showed to his confidant Haganon, whose 

 humble parentage and arrogant conduct made him odious to them, 

 drove him from hia kingdom, which was seized by Robert, duke of 

 France, and brother of the late king Eudes. By violating an armistice, 

 Charles managed to surprisa his rival. Robert was killed in the 

 engagement, but his troops, under the command of his son Hugues, 

 gained the victory ; and Raoul, duke of Bourgogne, was elected king 

 in his room. Charles, having in vaiu sought assistance in several 

 quarters, was beguiled by the promises of Heribert, or Herbert, count 

 of Vermaudoia, who made himself master of his person, and placed 

 him in confinement (1*23). His wife, sister of Athelstan, king of the 

 Anglo-Saxons, took refuge in England with her son Louis, then a boy, 

 but afterwards king under the title of Louis IV. Outremer. A quarrel 

 between the Count of Vermandois and the King Raoul seemed to offer 

 a gleam of hope to Charles, who was set at liberty by Herbert; but 

 the difference was soon made up, aud Charles was remanded to confine- 

 ment (928). Raoul treated his fallen rival with considerable kindness, 

 paid him a visit, and bestowed upon him several presents. Charles 

 died in captivity In 929, after a reign distinguished alike by incapacity 

 and misfortune. 



CSIAULES IV., le Bel (the Handsome), third sou of Philippe IV., 

 le Bel, succeeded his brother, Philippe V., le Long, in 1322. He had 

 received in the lifetime of his father the county of La Marche as an 

 appanage. He had in the commencement of his late brother's reign 

 vindicated the right of a female claimant to the throne, but that 

 brother had succeeded in procuring from the states-general of the 

 nation a declaration that females could not succeed to the crown of 

 France ; and upon Philippe's death without male issue the principle thus 

 recognised led to the undisputed succession of his brother Charles. 



The reign of Charles was short (1322-28), and not marked by any 

 great events. His first care was to divorce his wife Blauche, daughter 

 of Otho, count of Bourgogue, who had been convicted of adultery, and 

 shut up in prison. He procured a divorce, on the ground not of 

 adultery, but on that of consanguinity, and married Marie of Luxem- 

 bourg, daughter of the Emperor Henry VII. He proceeded to con- 

 siderable severities against the financiers who had managed the revenues 

 of the late king, causing the chief of them, Girard la Guete, to be put 

 to the torture, of which he died. He also put to death Lille Jourdain, 

 a noble of Languedoc, accused of murder and other crimes ; and is said 

 to have used great severity towards unjust judges. He was engaged 

 in war with Edward II. of England, who had married Isabella, sister 

 of Charles. Isabella being sent to the court of France to compromise 

 the quarrel, succeeded in that object, but obtained from Charles support 

 both of money aud men in the armament which she prepared against 

 her husband, and hia favourite, Le l)espenser. Charles intrigued also 

 with the pope in order to obtain the imperial crown, then disputed 

 between Frede-ric of Austria and Louis of Bavaria ; and his gold led to 

 the invasion of Germany by a horde of pagan barbarians, Lithuanians, 

 Wallachians, aud Russians. It was on occasion of a visit paid by 

 Charles to Toulouse (1323), that the people of that city sought to 

 revive the ancient Proven9al poetry by the institution of a yearly 

 concourse of poets at the Floral Games : this institutioi), with modi- 

 fications, contiuued down to the revolution. Charles lost his wife and 

 an infant son in 1324. Wrthin three months he married a third wife, 

 Jeanne, daughter of his uncle, the Count of Evreux ; but he had no 

 male issue by her. He died in 1328 ; and in him ended tha direct 

 succession of the line of Capet, the crown passing into the collateral 

 branch of Valois. 



CHARLES V., le Sago, was the son of the unfortunate King 

 Jean II., who was taken prisoner by Edward the Black Prince at 



