The last Carolingians were in no wise puppets and do-nothings like the last Merovingians. Louis IV. proved a strenuous warrior, with a full sense of his royal dignity. He ruled directly over little more than the hill-town of Laon and its neighbourhood, but he did wonders with his scanty resources. He married a sister of Otto the Great, and with German help was able to press severely his former patron. But Otto soon withdrew beyond the Rhine, and Louis, deprived of his help, and ever planning schemes too vast for his resources, was soon altogether at Hugh’s mercy. In 946 he was driven out of Laon: ‘the only town,’ as he complained, ‘where I could shut myself up with my wife and children, the town that I prefer to my life.’ In his despair he laid his wrongs before King Otto and a council of bishops at Ingelheim. Hugh prudently yielded before the threatened thunders of the Church. He renewed his homage to King Louis, and restored Laon to him. ‘Henceforth,’ says the chronicler, ‘their friendship was as firm as their struggles had formerly been violent.’ When Louis died suddenly in 954, his thirteen-year-old son, Lothair, was chosen king through Hugh’s influence. Two years later the great duke died.
Hugh the Great’s son and successor was also named Hugh. He is famous in history by the surname of ‘Capet,’ which he obtained from bearing the cope of the abbot of St. Martin’s at Tours, but which, like most famous surnames, has no contemporary authority. Brought up in his father’s school, he was clear-headed, cunning, resourceful, and cold-blooded. [Sidenote: Hugh Capet and King Lothair, 954–986.] He soon extended the power of his house, establishing one of his brothers in Burgundy, and marrying Adelaide, the heiress of Poitou, so as to be able to push forward claims in the lands beyond the Loire. Both in policy and resources he overmatched the young king Lothair, who tried as he grew up to play his father’s part; but his means were too small, and he embarked on contradictory policies which destroyed each other. His father had relied upon the support of Otto I., but Lothair, tempted by the long tradition of loyalty which bound Lotharingia to the Carolingian house, sought to find a substitute for his dwindling patrimony in northern France by winning domains for himself in that region. The strong Saxon kings would not tolerate the falling away of Lorraine from their Empire. Otto II. invaded France [see page 38] and vigorously punished the presumptuous Carolingian. Henceforth Lothair had no support against the subtle policy of the new Duke of the French. He even alienated Adalbero, the famous Archbishop of Reims, and the last prominent ecclesiastical upholder of the tottering dynasty, so that he repudiated the traditional policy of his see, and allied himself with the duke and the Emperor. Gerbert, the ‘scholasticus’ of Adalbero’s cathedral school, and the author of his policy, established an alliance between Hugh Capet and Otto III., and was soon able to boast that Lothair was but king in name, and that the real king was Duke Hugh. After losing the support of the Germans and of the Church, the Carolingians had absolutely nothing left but their own paltry resources. Yet Lothair gallantly struggled on till his death, in 986, after a nominal reign of thirty-two years. [Sidenote: Louis V., 986–987.] His son, Louis V., who had reigned jointly with him since 979, succeeded to his phantom kingship, and contrived to win over Duke Hugh, at whose instigation he led an expedition into Poitou. But Louis also quarrelled with Archbishop Adalbero, and alienated the Church. Adalbero intrigued against him, and the prelate’s triumph was hastened by Louis’ premature death in the hunting-field (987). He was the last of the Carolingian kings.