Lombards
The Lombards or Longobards were a Germanic people who ruled most of the Italian Peninsula from 568 to 774. The Lombard historian Paul the Deacon wrote in the Historia Langobardorum that the Lombards descended from a small tribe called the Winnili, who dwelt in southern Scandinavia before migrating to seek new lands. In the 1st century AD, they formed part of the Suebi, in north-western Germany. By the end of the 5th century, they had moved into the area coinciding with modern Austria and Slovakia north of the Danube river, where they subdued the Heruls and fought frequent wars with the Gepids; the Lombard king Audoin defeated the Gepid leader Thurisind in 551 or 552. Following this victory, Alboin decided to lead his people to Italy, which had become depopulated and devastated after the long Gothic War between the Byzantine Empire and the Ostrogothic Kingdom there. In contrast with the Goths and the Vandals, the Lombards left Scandinavia and descended due south through Germany and Slovenia, only leaving Germanic territory a few decades before reaching Italy.
The Lombards would have remained a predominantly Germanic tribe by the time they invaded Italy. The Lombards were joined by numerous Saxons, Gepids, Bulgars and Ostrogoths, their invasion of Italy was unopposed. By late 569 they had conquered all of northern Italy and the principal cities north of the Po River except Pavia, which fell in 572. At the same time, they occupied areas in southern Italy, they established a Lombard Kingdom in north and central Italy named Regnum Italicum, which reached its zenith under the 8th-century ruler Liutprand. In 774, the Kingdom was integrated into his Empire. However, Lombard nobles continued to rule southern parts of the Italian peninsula, well into the 11th century when they were conquered by the Normans and added to their County of Sicily. In this period, the southern part of Italy still under Longobardic domination was known to the foreigners, by the name Langbarðaland, in the Norse runestones, their legacy is apparent in the regional name Lombardy. The fullest account of Lombard origins and practices is the Historia Langobardorum of Paul the Deacon, written in the 8th century.
Paul's chief source for Lombard origins, however, is the 7th-century Origo Gentis Langobardorum. The Origo Gentis Langobardorum tells the story of a small tribe called the Winnili dwelling in southern Scandinavia; the Winnili were split into three groups and one part left their native land to seek foreign fields. The reason for the exodus was overpopulation; the departing people were led by the brothers Ybor and Aio and their mother Gambara and arrived in the lands of Scoringa the Baltic coast or the Bardengau on the banks of the Elbe. Scoringa was ruled by the Vandals and their chieftains, the brothers Ambri and Assi, who granted the Winnili a choice between tribute or war; the Winnili were young and brave and refused to pay tribute, saying "It is better to maintain liberty by arms than to stain it by the payment of tribute." The Vandals prepared for war and consulted Godan, who answered that he would give the victory to those whom he would see first at sunrise. The Winnili were fewer in number and Gambara sought help from Frea, who advised that all Winnili women should tie their hair in front of their faces like beards and march in line with their husbands.
At sunrise, Frea turned her husband's bed so that he was facing east, woke him. So Godan spotted the Winnili first and asked, "Who are these long-beards?," and Frea replied, "My lord, thou hast given them the name, now give them the victory." From that moment onwards, the Winnili were known as the Longbeards. When Paul the Deacon wrote the Historia between 787 and 796 he was a Catholic monk and devoted Christian, he thought the pagan stories of his people "silly" and "laughable". Paul explained. A modern theory suggests that the name "Langobard" comes from a name of Odin. Priester states that when the Winnili changed their name to "Lombards", they changed their old agricultural fertility cult to a cult of Odin, thus creating a conscious tribal tradition. Fröhlich inverts the order of events in Priester and states that with the Odin cult, the Lombards grew their beards in resemblance of the Odin of tradition and their new name reflected this. Bruckner remarks that the name of the Lombards stands in close relation to the worship of Odin, whose many names include "the Long-bearded" or "the Grey-bearded", that the Lombard given name Ansegranus shows that the Lombards had this idea of their chief deity.
The same Old Norse root Barth or Barði, meaning "beard", is shared with the Heaðobards mentioned in both Beowulf and in Widsith, where they are in conflict with the Danes. They were a branch of the Langobards. Alternatively some etymological sources suggest an Old High German root, meaning “axe”, while Edward Gibbon puts forth an alternative suggestion which argues that: …Börde still signifies “a fertile plain by the side of a river,” and a district near Magdeburg is still called the lange Börd
Roubaix
Roubaix is a city in northern France, located in the Lille metropolitan area. It is a mono-industrial commune in the Nord department, which grew in the 19th century from its textile industries, with most of the same characteristic features as those of English and American boom towns; this former new town has faced many challenges linked to deindustrialisation such as urban decay, with their related economic and social implications, since its major industries fell into decline by the middle of the 1970s. Located to the northeast of Lille, adjacent to Tourcoing, Roubaix is the chef-lieu of two cantons and the third largest city in the French region of Hauts-de-France ranked by population with nearly 96,000 inhabitants. Together with the nearby cities of Lille, Villeneuve-d'Ascq and eighty-six other communes, Roubaix gives structure to a four-centred metropolitan area inhabited by more than 1.1 million people: the European Metropolis of Lille. To a greater extent, Roubaix is in the center of a vast conurbation formed with the Belgian cities of Mouscron and Tournai, which gave birth to the first European Grouping of Territorial Cooperation in January 2008, Lille–Kortrijk–Tournai with an aggregate over 2 million inhabitants.
Roubaix occupies a central position on the north-east slope of the Métropole Européenne de Lille: it is set on the eastern side of Lille and the southern side of Tourcoing, close to the Belgian border. As regards towns' boundaries, Roubaix is encompassed by seven cities which constitute its immediate neighbouring environment; these municipalities are namely: Tourcoing to the north and the northwest, Wattrelos to the northeast, Leers to the east, Lys-lez-Lannoy to the southeast, Hem to the south and Croix to the southwest and the west. Roubaix, alongside those municipalities and twenty-one other communes, belongs to the land of Ferrain, a little district of the former Castellany of Lille between the Lys and Escaut rivers; as the crow flies, the distance between Roubaix and the following cities is some odd: 16 kilometres to Tournai, 18 kilometres to Kortrijk, 84 kilometres to Brussels and 213 kilometres to Paris. The soft hollow plain, upon which Roubaix lies, stretches on an east-west oriented syncline axis which trends south to southeast towards the Paleozoic limestone of the Mélantois-Tournaisis faulted anticline.
This area consists predominantly of Holocene deposits of alluvial origin. It is low, with an elevation drop of only 35 m over its 13.23 square kilometres. The lowest altitude of this area stands at 17 m, while its highest altitude is 52 m meters above the sea level; the Trichon stream fed by waters of the Espierre stream used to flow through the rural landscape of Roubaix before the industrialisation process began to alter this area in the middle of the 19th century. From that century on, the ensuing industries, with their increasing needs for reliable supplies of goods and water, led to the building of an inland waterway connected upstream from the Deûle and downstream to the Marque and Espierre toward the Escaut, which linked directly Roubaix to Lille. Opened in 1877, the Canal de Roubaix crosses the town from its northern neighbourhoods to its eastern neighbourhoods and flows along the city's boundaries; the Canal de Roubaix closed after more than a century in use. Thank to the European funded project Blue Links, the waterway has been reopened to navigation since 2011.
Despite some American statements that weather conditions in Roubaix were bad during the 19th century, the area of the city is not known for undergoing unusual weather events. In regard to the town's geographical location and the results of the Météo-France's weather station of Lille-Lesquin, Roubaix is a temperate oceanic climate: while summer experiences mild temperatures, winter's temperatures may fall to below zero. Precipitation is infrequently intense; the current city's name is most derived from Frankish rausa "reed" and baki "brook". Thence the sense of Roubaix can find its origin on the banks of the three following historical brooks: Espierre and Favreuil; the place was mentioned for the first time in a Latinised form in the 9th century: Villa Rusbaci. Thereafter, the following names were in use: 1047 and 1106 Rubais, 1122 Rosbays, 1166 Rusbais, 1156 and 1202 Robais, 1223 Roubais. Over the span of centuries, the name evolved to Roubaix as shown on Mercator's map of Flanders published at Leuven in 1540.
Parallel to the official and usual name Roubaix, some translations are worth a mention. Firstly, though the city has never belonged to the Flemish-speaking area, the seldom-heard renderings Robeke and Roodebeeke are documented for Roubaix. Furthermore, the Dutch Language Union established Robaais as the city's proper Dutch name. Lastly, one can cite Rosbacum as the definite Latin transcription of Roubaix, in use since the 19th century, as recorded on dedication statements sealed in the first stones of the foundations of the City Hall laid in 1840 and the Church of Notre Dame laid in 1842. Inhabitants of Roubaix are known in English as "Roubaisians" and in French as Roubaisiens or in the feminine form Roubaisiennes natively called Roubaignos or in the feminine form Roubaignoses; the evolution of the number of inhabitants is known through the population censuses carried out in the town since 1793 and the research study of Louis-Edmond Marissal, Clerk of the Peace of the city, published in 1844.
From the 21st century, communes with more than 10,000 population have sample surveys held every year, unlike other municipalities that have a real
Italy
Italy the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe. Located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Austria and the enclaved microstates San Marino and Vatican City. Italy covers an area of 301,340 km2 and has a temperate seasonal and Mediterranean climate. With around 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth-most populous EU member state and the most populous country in Southern Europe. Due to its central geographic location in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, Italy has been home to a myriad of peoples and cultures. In addition to the various ancient peoples dispersed throughout modern-day Italy, the most famous of which being the Indo-European Italics who gave the peninsula its name, beginning from the classical era and Carthaginians founded colonies in insular Italy and Genoa, Greeks established settlements in the so-called Magna Graecia, while Etruscans and Celts inhabited central and northern Italy respectively; the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom in the 8th century BC, which became a republic with a government of the Senate and the People.
The Roman Republic conquered and assimilated its neighbours on the peninsula, in some cases through the establishment of federations, the Republic expanded and conquered parts of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. By the first century BC, the Roman Empire emerged as the dominant power in the Mediterranean Basin and became the leading cultural and religious centre of Western civilisation, inaugurating the Pax Romana, a period of more than 200 years during which Italy's technology, economy and literature flourished. Italy remained the metropole of the Roman Empire; the legacy of the Roman Empire endured its fall and can be observed in the global distribution of culture, governments and the Latin script. During the Early Middle Ages, Italy endured sociopolitical collapse and barbarian invasions, but by the 11th century, numerous rival city-states and maritime republics in the northern and central regions of Italy, rose to great prosperity through shipping and banking, laying the groundwork for modern capitalism.
These independent statelets served as Europe's main trading hubs with Asia and the Near East enjoying a greater degree of democracy than the larger feudal monarchies that were consolidating throughout Europe. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science and art. Italian culture flourished, producing famous scholars and polymaths such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Machiavelli. During the Middle Ages, Italian explorers such as Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, John Cabot and Giovanni da Verrazzano discovered new routes to the Far East and the New World, helping to usher in the European Age of Discovery. Italy's commercial and political power waned with the opening of trade routes that bypassed the Mediterranean. Centuries of infighting between the Italian city-states, such as the Italian Wars of the 15th and 16th centuries, left the region fragmented, it was subsequently conquered and further divided by European powers such as France and Austria.
By the mid-19th century, rising Italian nationalism and calls for independence from foreign control led to a period of revolutionary political upheaval. After centuries of foreign domination and political division, Italy was entirely unified in 1871, establishing the Kingdom of Italy as a great power. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, Italy industrialised, namely in the north, acquired a colonial empire, while the south remained impoverished and excluded from industrialisation, fuelling a large and influential diaspora. Despite being one of the main victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil, leading to the rise of a fascist dictatorship in 1922. Participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in military defeat, economic destruction and the Italian Civil War. Following the liberation of Italy and the rise of the resistance, the country abolished the monarchy, reinstated democracy, enjoyed a prolonged economic boom and, despite periods of sociopolitical turmoil became a developed country.
Today, Italy is considered to be one of the world's most culturally and economically advanced countries, with the sixth-largest worldwide national wealth. Its advanced economy ranks eighth-largest in the world and third in the Eurozone by nominal GDP. Italy owns the third-largest central bank gold reserve, it has a high level of human development, it stands among the top countries for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military and diplomatic affairs. Italy is a founding and leading member of the European Union and a member of numerous international institutions, including the UN, NATO, the OECD, the OSCE, the WTO, the G7, the G20, the Union for the Mediterranean, the Council of Europe, Uniting for Consensus, the Schengen Area and many more; as a reflection
Louis the Pious
Louis the Pious called the Fair, the Debonaire, was the King of the Franks and co-Emperor with his father, from 813. He was King of Aquitaine from 781; as the only surviving adult son of Charlemagne and Hildegard, he became the sole ruler of the Franks after his father's death in 814, a position which he held until his death, save for the period 833–34, during which he was deposed. During his reign in Aquitaine, Louis was charged with the defence of the empire's southwestern frontier, he conquered Barcelona from the Muslims in 801 and asserted Frankish authority over Pamplona and the Basques south of the Pyrenees in 812. As emperor he included his adult sons, Lothair and Louis, in the government and sought to establish a suitable division of the realm among them; the first decade of his reign was characterised by several tragedies and embarrassments, notably the brutal treatment of his nephew Bernard of Italy, for which Louis atoned in a public act of self-debasement. In the 830s his empire was torn by civil war between his sons, only exacerbated by Louis's attempts to include his son Charles by his second wife in the succession plans.
Though his reign ended on a high note, with order restored to his empire, it was followed by three years of civil war. Louis is compared unfavourably to his father, though the problems he faced were of a distinctly different sort. Louis was born while his father Charlemagne was on campaign in Spain, at the Carolingian villa of Cassinogilum, according to Einhard and the anonymous chronicler called Astronomus, he was the third son of Charlemagne by his wife Hildegard. His grandfather was King Pepin the Younger. Louis was sent there with regents and a court. Charlemagne constituted the sub-kingdom in order to secure the border of his kingdom after the destructive war against the Aquitanians and Basques under Waifer and Hunald II, which culminated in the disastrous Battle of Roncesvalles. Charlemagne wanted his son Louis to grow up in the area. However, in 785, wary of the customs his son may have been taking in Aquitaine, Charlemagne sent for him to Aquitaine and Louis presented himself at the Royal Council of Paderborn dressed up in Basque costumes along with other youths in the same garment, which may have made a good impression in Toulouse, since the Basques of Vasconia were a mainstay of the Aquitanian army.
In 794, Charlemagne settled four former Gallo-Roman villas on Louis, in the thought that he would take in each in turn as winter residence: Doué-la-Fontaine in today's Anjou, Ebreuil in Allier, Angeac-Charente, the disputed Cassinogilum. Charlemagne's intention was to see all his sons brought up as natives of their given territories, wearing the national costume of the region and ruling by the local customs, thus were the children sent to their respective realms at so young an age. Each kingdom had its importance in keeping some frontier, Louis's was the Spanish March. In 797, the greatest city of the Marca, fell to the Franks when Zeid, its governor, rebelled against Córdoba and, handed it to them; the Umayyad authority recaptured it in 799. However, Louis marched the entire army of his kingdom, including Gascons with their duke Sancho I of Gascony, Provençals under Leibulf, Goths under Bera, over the Pyrenees and besieged it for two years, wintering there from 800 to 801, when it capitulated.
The sons were not given independence from central authority and Charlemagne ingrained in them the concepts of empire and unity by sending them on military expeditions far from their home bases. Louis campaigned in the Italian Mezzogiorno against the Beneventans at least once. Louis was one of Charlemagne's three legitimate sons to survive infancy, he had Lothair who died during infancy. According to Frankish custom, Louis had expected to share his inheritance with his brothers, Charles the Younger, King of Neustria, Pepin, King of Italy. In the Divisio Regnorum of 806, Charlemagne had slated Charles the Younger as his successor as emperor and chief king, ruling over the Frankish heartland of Neustria and Austrasia, while giving Pepin the Iron Crown of Lombardy, which Charlemagne possessed by conquest. To Louis's kingdom of Aquitaine, he added Septimania and part of Burgundy. However, Charlemagne's other legitimate sons died – Pepin in 810 and Charles in 811 – and Louis alone remained to be crowned co-emperor with Charlemagne in 813.
On his father's death in 814, he inherited the entire Frankish kingdom and all its possessions. While at his villa of Doué-la-Fontaine, Louis received news of his father's death, he rushed to Aachen and crowned himself emperor to shouts of Vivat Imperator Ludovicus by the attending nobles. Upon arriving at the imperial court in Aachen, one of Louis' first acts was to purge the palace of its "filth", he destroyed the old Germanic pagan tokens and texts, collected by Charlemagne. He further exiled members of the court he deemed morally "dissolute", including some of his own relatives. From the start of his reign, his coinage imitated his father Charlemagne's portrait, which gave it an image of imperial authority and prestige, he sent all of his unmarried sisters to nunneries, to avoid any possible entanglements from overly powerful brothers-in-law. Sparing his illegitimate half-brothers, he forced his father's cousins and Wala to be tonsured, placing them in Noirmoutier and Corbie despite the latter's initial loyalty.
His chief counsellors were
Hincmar
Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, was the friend and propagandist of Charles the Bald. He belonged to a noble family of northern Francia. Hincmar was born in 806 to a distinguished family of the West Franks. Destined to the monastic life, he was brought up at Saint-Denis under the direction of the abbot Hilduin, went appointed court chaplain in 822, brought him to the court of the emperor Louis the Pious. There he became acquainted with the political as well as the ecclesiastical administration of the empire; when Hilduin was disgraced in 830 for having joined the party of Lothair I, Hincmar accompanied him into exile at Corvey in Saxony. Hincmar used his influence with the emperor on behalf of the banished abbot, not without success: for he stood in high favour with Louis the Pious, having always been a faithful and loyal adherent, he returned with Hilduin to Saint-Denis when the abbot was reconciled with the emperor and remained faithful to the Louis during his struggle with his sons. After the death of Louis the Pious Hincmar supported Charles the Bald, received from him the abbacies of Nôtre-Dame at Compiègne and Saint-Germer-de-Fly.
Archbishop Ebbo had been deposed in 835 at the synod of Thionville for having broken his oath of fidelity to the emperor Louis, whom he had deserted to join the party of Lothair. After the death of Louis, Ebbo succeeded in regaining possession of his see for some years, but in 844 Pope Sergius II confirmed his deposition. In 845 Hincmar obtained through the king's support the archbishopric of Reims, this choice was confirmed at the Synod of Beauvais, he was consecrated archbishop on 3 May 845. One of the first cares of the new prelate was the restitution to his metropolitan see of the domains, alienated under Ebbo and given as benefices to laymen. From the beginning of his episcopate Hincmar was in constant conflict with the clerks, ordained by Ebbo during his reappearance; these clerks, whose ordination was regarded as invalid by Hincmar and his adherents, were condemned in 853 at the Council of Soissons, the decisions of that council were confirmed in 855 by Pope Benedict III. This conflict, bred an antagonism of which Hincmar was to feel the effects.
During the next thirty years the archbishop of Reims played a prominent part in church and state. His authoritative and energetic will inspired, in great measure directed, the policy of the West Frankish kingdom until his death; as an expert on government and court ceremonial, an aggressive advocate of ecclesiastical privilege Hincmar took an active part in all the great political and religious affairs of his time, was energetic in defending and extending the rights of the church and of the metropolitans in general, of the metropolitan of the church of Reims in particular. In the resulting conflicts, in which his personal interest was in question, he displayed great activity and a wide knowledge of canon law, but did not scruple to resort to disingenuous interpretation of texts, his first encounter was with Gottschalk, whose predestinarian doctrines claimed to be modelled on those of St Augustine. Hincmar placed himself at the head of the party that regarded Gottschalk's doctrines as heretical, succeeded in procuring the arrest and imprisonment of his adversary.
For a part at least of his doctrines Gottschalk found ardent defenders, such as Lupus of Ferrières, Prudentius of Troyes, the deacon Florus, Amolo of Lyons. Through the energy and activity of Hincmar the theories of Gottschalk were condemned at the second council of Quierzy and Valence, the decisions of these two synods were confirmed at the synods of Langres and Savonnières, near Toul. To refute the predestinarian heresy, Hincmar composed his De praedestinatione Dei et libero arbitrio, against certain propositions advanced by Gottschalk on the Trinity he wrote a treatise called De una et non trina deitate. Gottschalk died in prison in 868; the question of the divorce of Lothair II, king of Lorraine, who had repudiated his wife Theutberga to marry his concubine Waldrada, engaged Hincmar's literary activities in another direction. At the request of a number of great personages in Lorraine he composed in 860 his De divortio Lotharii regis et Theutbergae reginae, in which he vigorously attacked, both from the moral and the legal standpoints, the condemnation pronounced against the queen by the Synod of Aix-la-Chapelle.
Hincmar energetically supported the policy of Charles the Bald in Lorraine, less from devotion to the king's interests than from a desire to see the whole of the ecclesiastical province of Reims united under the authority of a single, sympathetic sovereign, in 869 it was he who consecrated Charles at Metz as king of Lorraine. In the middle of the ninth century there appeared in Gaul the collection of'false decretals' known as the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals; the exact date and the circumstances of the composition of the collection are still an open question, but it is certain that Hincmar was one of the first to know of their existence, he was not aware that the documents were forged. The importance assigned by these decretals to the bishops and the provincial councils, as well as to the direct intervention of the Holy See, tended to curtail the rights of the metropolitans. Rothad, bishop of Soissons, one of the most active members of the party in favour of the pseudo-Isidorian theories came into collision with his archbishop.
Deposed in 863 at the council of Soissons, presided over by Hincmar, Rothad appealed to Rome. Pope Nicholas I, supported him zealously, in
Charles the Bald
Charles the Bald was the King of West Francia, King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor. After a series of civil wars during the reign of his father, Louis the Pious, Charles succeeded by the Treaty of Verdun in acquiring the western third of the Carolingian Empire, he was the youngest son of Louis the Pious by his second wife, Judith. He was born on 13 June 823 in Frankfurt, when his elder brothers were adults and had been assigned their own regna, or subkingdoms, by their father; the attempts made by Louis the Pious to assign Charles a subkingdom, first Alemannia and the country between the Meuse and the Pyrenees were unsuccessful. The numerous reconciliations with the rebellious Lothair and Pepin, as well as their brother Louis the German, King of Bavaria, made Charles's share in Aquitaine and Italy only temporary, but his father did not give up and made Charles the heir of the entire land, once Gaul. At a diet in Aachen in 837, Louis the Pious bade. Pepin of Aquitaine died in 838, whereupon Charles at last received that kingdom, which angered Pepin's heirs and the Aquitainian nobles.
The death of the emperor in 840 led to the outbreak of war between his sons. Charles allied himself with his brother Louis the German to resist the pretensions of the new Emperor Lothair I, the two allies defeated Lothair at the Battle of Fontenoy-en-Puisaye on 25 June 841. In the following year, the two brothers confirmed their alliance by the celebrated Oaths of Strasbourg; the war was brought to an end by the Treaty of Verdun in August 843. The settlement gave Charles the Bald the kingdom of the West Franks, which he had been up until governing and which corresponded with what is now France, as far as the Meuse, the Saône, the Rhône, with the addition of the Spanish March as far as the Ebro. Louis received the eastern part of the Carolingian Empire, known as East Francia and as Germany. Lothair retained the Kingdom of Italy, he received the central regions from Flanders through the Rhineland and Burgundy as king of Middle Francia. The first years of Charles's reign, up to the death of Lothair I in 855, were comparatively peaceful.
During these years the three brothers continued the system of "confraternal government", meeting with one another, at Koblenz, at Meerssen, at Attigny. In 858, Louis the German, invited by disaffected nobles eager to oust Charles, invaded the West Frankish kingdom. Charles was so unpopular that he was unable to summon an army, he fled to Burgundy, he was saved only by the support of the bishops, who refused to crown Louis the German king, by the fidelity of the Welfs, who were related to his mother, Judith. In 860, he in his turn tried to seize the kingdom of his nephew, Charles of Provence, but was repulsed. On the death of his nephew Lothair II in 869, Charles tried to seize Lothair's dominions by having himself consecrated as King of Lotharingia at Metz, but he was compelled to open negotiations when Louis found support among Lothair's former vassals. Lotharingia was partitioned between Louis in the resulting treaty. Besides these family disputes, Charles had to struggle against repeated rebellions in Aquitaine and against the Bretons.
Led by their chiefs Nomenoë and Erispoë, who defeated the king at the Battle of Ballon and the Battle of Jengland, the Bretons were successful in obtaining a de facto independence. Charles fought against the Vikings, who devastated the country of the north, the valleys of the Seine and Loire, up to the borders of Aquitaine. At the Vikings' successful siege and sack of Paris in 845 and several times thereafter Charles was forced to purchase their retreat at a heavy price. Charles led various expeditions against the invaders and, by the Edict of Pistres of 864, made the army more mobile by providing for a cavalry element, the predecessor of the French chivalry so famous during the next 600 years. By the same edict, he ordered fortified bridges to be put up at all rivers to block the Viking incursions. Two of these bridges at Paris saved the city during its siege of 885–886. In 875, after the death of the Emperor Louis II, Charles the Bald, supported by Pope John VIII, traveled to Italy, receiving the royal crown at Pavia and the imperial insignia in Rome on 29 December.
Louis the German a candidate for the succession of Louis II, revenged himself by invading and devastating Charles' dominions, Charles had to return hastily to West Francia. After the death of Louis the German, Charles in his turn attempted to seize Louis's kingdom, but was decisively beaten at the Battle of Andernach on 8 October 876. In the meantime, John VIII, menaced by the Saracens, was urging Charles to come to his defence in Italy. Charles again crossed the Alps, but this expedition was received with little enthusiasm by the nobles, by his regent in Lombardy and they refused to join his army. At the same time Carloman, son of Louis the German, entered northern Italy. Charles, ill and in great distress, started on his way back to Gaul, but died while crossing the pass of Mont Cenis at Brides-les-Bains, on 6 October 877. According to the Annals of St-Bertin, Charles was hastily buried at the abbey of Nantua, Burgundy because the bearers were unable to withstand the stench of his decaying body.
He was to have been may have been transferred there later. It was recorded that there was a memorial brass there, melted down at the Revolution. Charles was succeeded by Louis. Charles was
Judith of Bavaria (died 843)
Queen Judith known as Judith of Bavaria, was the daughter of Count Welf of Bavaria and Saxon noblewoman, Hedwig. She was the second wife of Louis the Pious, King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor, which brought her the titles of queen and empress. Marriage to Louis marked the beginning of her rise as an influential figure in the Carolingian court, she had a daughter Gisela and a son, Charles the Bald. The birth of her son led to a major dispute over the imperial succession, tensions between her and Charles' half-brothers from Louis' first marriage, she would fall from grace when Charles' wife, the new empress Ermentrude of Orléans, rose to power. She was buried in 846 in Tours. No surviving sources provide year of birth. Judith was born around 797 Most girls in the Carolingian world were married in adolescence, with twelve years as the minimum age, though her marriage to the 41 year old King Louis occurred in 819, when she was around 22 years old. Judith was the daughter of the noble Saxon Heilwig and Count Welf I, belonged to the ancestor of the kin-group known to historians as the Welfs.
Though the Welf clan was noble, they were not part of the'"Imperial Aristocracy'" that dominated high office throughout the Carolingian empire. The Welf clan's leaders, having lost influence in their home region of Alemannia rose to power though cementing familial ties with the Carolingian Imperial Aristocracy in the 770s. Nonetheless, they remained a part of the upper aristocracy of their region, given the numerous appearance of the noble titles of ducal and comital in primary sources; this noble status made Judith a suitable marriage prospect for the imperial family, the Welf clan as a whole saw its prestige and power increase after Judith’s marriage to the Carolingian emperor Louis the Pious in 819. After the death on 3 October 818 of Louis' first wife Queen Ermengard, mother of his sons Louis the German and Lothar, Louis was urged by his counselors to remarry. Shortly after Christmas in 819 he married Judith in Aachen. Like many of the royal marriages of the time Judith was selected, prior to the marriage through a bridal show.
It is at the bride show that, at the age of forty one, Louis chose the young, twenty two year old Judith "after inspecting noble maidens who were brought to his court from all districts". In Frankish society, only women of the nobility were eligible to compete. Contemporary witnesses such as Ermoldus Nigellus, Walahfrid Strabo, Louis' biographer Thegan attributed Judith's selection to her extraordinary beauty and musical ability, it is just as however, that Louis was attracted to the geographical and political advantages offered by Judith's family. While scholars differ as to whether the Welfs were of Frankish or Alemannian descent, it is clear that they controlled significant territories to the east of the Rhine, were predominant political actors in both Bavaria and Alemannia; this fact would have made them desirable allies for Louis, since any military campaign in the empire's eastern frontiers would require the emperor to travel through this region. By marrying Judith, in other words, the emperor would gain friends and allies, an important military and political stronghold, the support of the nobility in that region.
Judith married Louis in 819 in Aachen. It was not uncommon. Judith's marriage was no exception to this practice and she received, according to sources, the monastery San Salvatore, located in Brescia; the monastery of San Salvatore and all the assets that fall under its jurisdiction, would fall under the protection with the protection of the King. Although, according to modern sources, the dowry was indicative that the marriage was in fact a "Vollehe", it did not mean that the dowry was static, insofar as it would remain within the possession of the Queen in perpetuity. In Carolingian societies the act of coronation was tied with the marriage, it was only upon the completion of the marriage. When Louis married his first wife Ermengard in 794, she was crowned and called "Augusta", a title that harkens back to the Roman "Augustus"; this bestowed on Ermengard the title of empress as it would Judith when she married Louis and was "crowned as empress and acclaimed Augusta by all". Historical sources show a gap in information available on Judith in the four years between her marriage in 819 and the birth of Charles in 823.
The most cause of this gap is that Judith would only rise to historical prominence when she became involved in her son's, Charles The Bald, life as an advocate for his career as successor to the throne. However, various sources like the Capitulare de villis and the De ordine palatii of Hincmar of Reims can be drawn upon to provide information on roles and responsibilities that Judith would have most played in court; the Capitulare de villis and the De ordine palatii define the role and the realm of influence of the empress to that of the court. If these documents are indicative of the empress's role in the court and palace in general it may be reasonably inferred what roles Judith would ha
