But Louis was as unfortunate in his testamentary arrangement as in all the other regulations of his life. Lothaire was to retain the eastern portion of the empire; Charles, his favourite, had France as far as the Rhine; while Louis was limited to the distant region of Bavaria. [A.D. 840.] And having made this disposition of his power, the meek and useless Louis descended into the tomb--a striking example, the French historians tell us, of the great historic truth renewed at such distant dates, that the villanies and cruelties of a race of kings bring misery on the most virtuous of their descendants. All the crimes of the three preceding reigns--the violence and disregard of life exhibited by Charlemagne himself--found their victim and expiation in his meek and gentle-minded son. The harshness of Henry VIII. of England, they add, and the despotic claims of James, were visited on the personally just and amiable Charles; and they point to the parallel case of their own Louis XVI., and see in the sad fortune of that mild and guileless sovereign the final doom of the murderous Charles IX., and the voluptuous and hypocritical Louis XIV. But these kings are still far off in the darkness of the coming centuries. It is a strange sight, in the middle of the ninth century, to see the successor of the great Emperor stealing through the confused and chaotic events of that wretched period, stripped as it were of sword and crown, but everywhere displaying the beauty of pure and simple goodness. He refused to condemn his enemies to death. He was only inexorable towards his own offences, and sometimes humbled himself for imaginary sins. A protector of the Church, a zealous supporter of Rome, it would give additional dignity to the act of canonization if the name of Louis the Debonnaire were added to the list of Saints.
But we have left the empire which it had taken so long to consolidate, now legally divided into three. There is a Charles in possession of the western division; a Louis in the farther Germany; and Lothaire, the unfilial triumpher at Aix-la-Chapelle, invested with the remainder of the Roman world. But Lothaire was not to be satisfied with remainders. Once in power, he was determined to recover the empire in its undivided state. He was King of Italy; master of Rome and of the Pope; he was eldest grandson of Charlemagne, and defied the opposition of his brothers. [A.D. 842.] A battle was fought at Fontenay in 842, in which these pretensions were overthrown; and the final severance took place in the following year between the French and German populations. The treaty between the brothers still remains. It is written in duplicate--one in a tongue still intelligible to German ears, and the other in a Romanized speech, which is nearer the French of the present day than the English of Alfred, or even of Edward the Confessor, is to ours.