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Image Processing
Technologies
Algorithms, Sensors, and Applications

EDITED BY

KlYOHARU AlZAWA
University of Tokyo
Tokyo, Japan

KATSUHIKO SAKAUE
Intelligent Systems Institute
Tsukuba, Japan

YASUHITO SUENAGA
Nagoya University
Nagoya, Japan

MARCEL DEKKER, INC. NEW YORK • BASEL

Although great care has been taken to provide accurate and current information, neither the
author(s) nor the publisher, nor anyone else associated with this publication, shall be liable
for any loss, damage, or liability directly or indirectly caused or alleged to be caused by this
book. The material contained herein is not intended to provide specific advice or recom-
mendations for any specific situation.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks

and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 0-8247-5057-8

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Headquarters
Marcel Dekker, Inc., 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, U.S.A.
tel: 212-696-9000; fax: 212-685-4540

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The publisher offers discounts on this book when ordered in bulk quantities. For more infor-
mation, write to Special Sales/Professional Marketing at the headquarters address above.

Copyright © 2004 by Marcel Dekker, Inc. AH Rights Reserved.

Neither this book nor any part may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or
by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publisher.

Current printing (last digit):

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

 Signal Processing and Communications

Editorial Board
Maurice G. Bellanger, Conservatoire National
des Arts et Metiers (CNAM), Paris
Ezio Biglieri, Politecnico di Torino, Italy
Sadaoki Furui, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Yih-Fang Huang, University of Notre Dame
Nikhil Jayant, Georgia Tech University
Aggelos K. Katsaggelos, Northwestern University
Mos Kaveh, University of Minnesota
P. K. Raja Rajasekaran, Texas Instruments
John Aasted Sorenson, IT University of Copenhagen
Hong-Jiang Zhang, Microsoft Research, China

1. Digital Signal Processing for Multimedia Systems, edited by Keshab

K. Parhi and Takao Nishitani
2. Multimedia Systems, Standards, and Networks, edited by Atul Puri
and Tsuhan Chen
3. Embedded Multiprocessors: Scheduling and Synchronization, Sun-
dararajan Sriram and Shuvra S. Bhattacharyya
4. Signal Processing for Intelligent Sensor Systems, David C. Swanson
5. Compressed Video over Networks, edited by Ming-Ting Sun and Amy
R. Reibman
6. Modulated Coding for Intersymbol Interference Channels, Xiang-Gen
Xia
7. Digital Speech Processing, Synthesis, and Recognition: Second Edi-
tion, Revised and Expanded, Sadaoki Furui
8. Modern Digital Halftoning, Daniel L. Lau and Gonzalo R. Arce
9. Blind Equalization and Identification, Zhi Ding and Ye (Geoffrey) Li
10. Video Coding for Wireless Communication Systems, King N. Ngan,
Chi W. Yap, andKeng T. Tan
11. Adaptive Digital Filters: Second Edition, Revised and Expanded,
Maurice G. Bellanger
12. Design of Digital Video Coding Systems, Jie Chen, Ut-Va Koc, and
K. J.Ray Liu
13. Programmable Digital Signal Processors: Architecture, Program-
ming, and Applications, edited by Yu Hen Hu
14. Pattern Recognition and Image Preprocessing: Second Edition, Re-
vised and Expanded, Sing-Tze Bow
15. Signal Processing for Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Spectros-
copy, edited by Hong Yan
16. Satellite Communication Engineering, Michael O. Kolawole
17. Speech Processing: A Dynamic and Optimization-Oriented Ap-
proach, Li Deng and Douglas O'Shaughnessy
18. Multidimensional Discrete Unitary Transforms: Representation, Par-
titioning, and Algorithms, Artyom M. Grigoryan and Sos A. Agaian
19. High-Resolution and Robust Signal Processing, Yingbo Hua, Alex B.
Gershman, and Qi Cheng
20. Domain-Specific Embedded Multiprocessors: Systems, Architec-
tures, Modeling, and Simulation, Shuvra Bhattacharyya, Ed De-
prettere, andJurgen Teich
21. Watermarking Systems Engineering: Enabling Digital Assets Secu-
rity and Other Applications, Mauro Barni and Franco Bartolini
22. Biosignal and Biomedical Image Processing: MATLAB-Based Ap-
plications, John L. Semmlow
23. Image Processing Technologies: Algorithms, Sensors, and Applica-
tions, Kiyoharu Aizawa, Katsuhiko Sakaue, and Yasuhito Suenaga

Additional Volumes in Preparation

Series Introduction

Over the past 50 years, digital signal processing has evolved as a major
engineering discipline. The fields of signal processing have grown from the
origin of fast Fourier transform and digital filter design to statistical spectral
analysis and array processing, image, audio, and multimedia processing, and
shaped developments in high-performance VLSI signal processor design.
Indeed, there are few fields that enjoy so many applications—signal processing
is everywhere in our lives.
When one uses a cellular phone, the voice is compressed, coded, and
modulated using signal processing techniques. As a cruise missile winds along
hillsides searching for the target, the signal processor is busy processing the
images taken along the way. When we are watching a movie in HDTV, millions
of audio and video data are being sent to our homes and received with
unbelievable fidelity. When scientists compare DNA samples, fast pattern
recognition techniques are being used. On and on, one can see the impact of
signal processing in almost every engineering and scientific discipline.
Because of the immense importance of signal processing and the fast-
growing demands of business and industry, this series on signal processing
serves to report up-to-date developments and advances in the field. The topics of
interest include but are not limited to the following:

• Signal theory and analysis

• Statistical signal processing
• Speech and audio processing
• Image and video processing
• Multimedia signal processing and technology
• Signal processing for communications
• Signal processing architectures and VLSI design

Ml
iv Series Introduction

We hope this series will provide the interested audience with high-quality,
state-of-the-art signal processing literature through research monographs, edited
books, and rigorously written textbooks by experts in their fields.
Preface

Research and development of image processing technologies has advanced very

rapidly in the past decade. Thanks to recent progress in VLSI technologies,
low-cost computers, huge storage, and broadband and wireless technologies,
handling image and video became very familiar to us. Digital still cameras,
digital video camcorders and internet video are already around us in daily life.
These technologies enable us to easily manipulate image and video on desktop
PCs. Research and development of applications of image processing have been
also accelerated and widened by the rapid growth of hardware development. A
number of image processing and computer vision techniques in current use, that
used to be in a topic of academic discussion, have now become reality as
working real-time systems.
In this book we describe the state of the art of image processing
technologies from various points of view. We focus on sensing, algorithms and
applications of the growing image processing fields. In order to provide accurate
coverage, we invited world renowned scholars and experts from both
universities and companies to contribute to this book.
All 10 chapters were originally published in 1999 as a special issue of
survey papers on image processing in the IEICE Transactions on Information
and Systems. It was a unique special issue because it covered a wide spectrum of
image processing from sensing to applications and it presented the state of the
art of the fields in detail. The issue was well-received, which encouraged us to
publish the articles as a book by updating the contents.
Chapter 1 to 4 describe image processing methodologies mainly related to
three-dimensional imaging. Chapter 1 is on depth computation from images.
Chapter 2 describes optimization techniques that are related not only to
three-dimensional recovery but also to segmentation, edge detection, etc.
Chapter 3 focuses on reconstruction of motion and structure from multiple
Preface vi

images. Chapter 4 covers the emerging research field of three-dimensional

image communication from the point of view of representation and
compression.
Chapter 5 and 6 examine sensors for advanced image processing systems.
Chapter 5 describes various omnidirectional sensors and their applications.
Chapter 6 is on computational sensors, in other words, smart sensors that
integrate image acquisition and processing on a single VLSI.
Chapter 7 to 10 describe four different application fields of image
processing. Chapter 7 covers a wide spectrum of facial image processing, which
includes detection, recognition, practical recognition systems, synthesis of facial
images and useful databases. Various application systems for human-machine
interaction, agents, robots, and facial image cartoons are described. Chapter 8
discusses image processing techniques used in document analysis and
recognition. Chapter 9, on medical image processing, focuses on computer-aided
diagnosis (CAD) and computer-aided surgery (CAS). CAD and CAS are in the
application areas of pattern recognition and visualization, respectively. Chapter
10 covers Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). Image processing for controlling
vehicular traffic is described.
We thank all the contributors, as without them this book could not exist.
Indeed, it is their efforts that make this text valuable. Image processing is
continuously expanding in many different directions. In this single book, we
could not travel everywhere, but hope that the reader will use the book as a
roadmap for future exploration. Finally, we acknowledge the patience and
guidance of Mr. B. Black, Mr. B. J. Clark, and others at Marcel Dekker, Inc.,
who helped us to produce this book.

Kiyoharu Aizawa
Katsuhiko Sakaue
Yasuhito Suenaga
Contents

Series Introduction Hi

Preface v

1. Passive Range Sensing Techniques: Depth from Images 1

Naokazu Yokoya, Takeshi Shakunaga, and Masayuki Kanbara
2. Optimization Approaches in Computer Vision and 27
Image Processing
Katsuhiko Sakaue, Akira Amano, and Naokazu Yokoya
3. Motion and Shape from Sequences of Images Under 55
Feature Correspondences
JunFujiki
4. Compression and Representation of 3-D Images 90
Takeshi Naemura, Masahide Kaneko, and Hiroshi Harashima
5. Omnidirectional Sensing and Its Applications 116
Yasushi Yagi
6. Computational Sensors: Vision VLSI 142
Kiyoharu Aizawa
vii
viii Contents

7. Processing and Recognition of Face Images and Its Applications 162

Masahide Kaneko and Osamu Hasegawa
8. Document Analysis and Recognition 212
Toyohide Watanabe
9. Recent Progress in Medical Image Processing 233
Junichiro Toriwaki, Kensaku Mori, and Jun-ichi Hasegawa
10. Image Processing for Intelligent Transport Systems 258
Shinji Ozawa
Index 277
Contributors

Kiyoharu Aizawa
University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Akira Amano
Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

Jun Fujiki
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology,
Tsukuba, Japan

Hiroshi Harashima
The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Jun-ichi Hasegawa
Chukyo University, Toyota, Japan
Osamu Hasegawa
Imaging Science and Engineering Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of
Technology, Nagatsuta, Yokohama, Japan
Neuroscience Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced
Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan
PRESTO, Japan Science and Technology Corp. (JST), Kawaguchi,
Saitama, Japan
Masayuki Kanbara
Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara, Japan

ix
x Contributors

Masahide Kaneko
Department of Electronic Engineering, The University of Electro-Com-
munications, Chofu, Tokyo, Japan
Kensaku Mori
Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
Takeshi Naemura
Stanford University, Stanford, CA
Shinji Ozawa
Keio University, Tokyo, Japan
Katsuhiko Sakaue
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology,
Tsukuba, Japan
Takeshi Shakunaga
Okayama University, Okayama, Japan
Junichiro Toriwaki
Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
Toyohide Watanabe
Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan
Yasushi Yagi
Osaka University, Osaka, Japan
Naokazu Yokoya
A/ara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara, Japan
1
Passive Range Sensing Techniques:
Depth from Images

Naokazu Yokoya and Masayuki Kanbara

Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Nara, Japan

Takeshi Shakunaga
Okayama University, Okayama, Japan

SUMMARY

Acquisition of three-dimensional (3-D) information of a real-world scene from

two-dimensional images has been one of the most important issues in computer
vision and image understanding in the last two decades. Non-contact range acqui-
sition techniques are essentially classified into two classes: passive and active
methods. This chapter concentrates on passive depth extraction techniques that
have the advantage that 3-D information can be obtained without affecting the
scene. Passive range sensing techniques are often referred to as shape from x,
where x is one of the visual cues such as shading, texture, contour, focus, stereo,
motion, and so on. These techniques produce 2.5-D representations of visible sur-
faces. This chapter discusses several aspects of this research field and reviews the
literature including some recent advances such as video-rate range imaging sen-
sors, emerging themes, and applications.

1. INTRODUCTION

One of the most important tasks in computer vision and image understanding is to
three-dimensionally interpret two-dimensional (2-D) images of a real-world scene.
Thus, the acquisition of three-dimensional (3-D) range or depth information of a
1
 Yokoya et al.

scene from 2-D images has attracted much attention in the last two decades. Non-
contact range acquisition techniques are essentially classified into two categories:
passive and active methods. The former is generally based on solving an inverse
problem of the process of projecting a 3-D scene onto a 2-D image plane and has
an advantage that 3-D information can be obtained without affecting the scene.
The latter is accomplished by emitting some radio or light energy to a target scene
and receiving their reflections. Previous reviews of passive methods are found in
[l]-[4] and those of active sensors in [5], [6]. This chapter concentrates on review-
ing a wide range of passive techniques for extracting depth information from im-
ages.
Passive range sensing techniques are often referred to as shape from x,
where x is one of the visual cues such as shading, texture, contour, focus, stereo,
motion, and so on. As mentioned above, this type of technique requires solving
inverse problems of image formation processes (see Fig. 1): Some may be referred
to as optical or photometric inverse problems and others as geometric inverse
problems. These passive techniques are roughly classified into two approaches:
One is based on solving photometric inverse problems using one or more images
taken mainly from a single viewpoint and the other is based on solving geometric
inverse problems using multiple images taken from different viewpoints. Both
techniques produce 2.5-D representations of visible surfaces. We discuss several
aspects of this research field and review the literature including some recent ad-
vances.

(inverse process)
Figure 1 Image formation of a 3-D scene and its inverse process.

This chapter is structured as follows. First, Section 2 describes several

methods for acquiring depth mainly from single-view images; that is, shape from
shading, shape from texture, shape from contour, and shape from focus/defocus.
We then address the problem of acquiring depth from multiple-view images,
which includes binocular stereo, multi-ocular stereo, and motion stereo, in Section
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
Lothair kept his old kingdom of Italy, together with a long narrow
strip of territory reaching from the mouth of the Rhone to the
mouths of the Rhine and Yssel. This strip consisted of Frisia, the bulk
of Austrasia, the most of Burgundy, and Provence. Charles took the
western kingdoms of Neustria and Aquitaine, with the Spanish March
and western Burgundy, for his kinsman Pippin was abandoned to his
mercy by the emperor, and the lands south of the Loire, as well as
those north, were put into his share of the empire.
Two of these realms, those of Charles and Lewis, roughly
corresponded to national unities. The eastern kingdom comprised all
the Teutonic districts of the empire, except Austrasia. The western,
formed by the union of Neustria and Aquitaine, was the first
foreshadowing of the modern kingdom of France, comprising as it
did the bulk of the Romance districts of the empire, where the
Teutonic element had always been small, and was of late growing
less and less prominent. But Lothair’s kingdom was an unnatural and
unwieldy aggregation of districts connected neither by blood, by
language, nor by historical ties. Its shape seems to have been
determined merely by the wish to give the emperor both the
imperial cities—Rome and Aachen—together with a strip of soil
conveniently connecting them. The Teutonic Austrasians, the
Romance-speaking Burgundians, and the Italian Lombards were in
no wise fitted for union with each other, and were certain to drift
apart, alike from geographical and from national reasons. They only
adhered to each other for one man’s life, and fell asunder the
moment that he died.
For the future we shall find the wide realm of Charles the Great
constantly tending to minute sub-division. The connection between
east and west, north and south, grows constantly less, and ere long
we shall be compelled to tell of the fortunes of the different fractions
of the empire in separate chapters, since the central cord of
connection formed by the kingly power has finally snapped. But as
long as the generation of the sons of Lewis the Pious survives, there
is still a certain interdependence between the history of the Eastern
and Western Franks, and it is not till the deposition of Charles the
Fat, in 887, that the elements of dissolution finally triumph, and all
ideas of the reunion of the empire are finally discredited.
In 843 commences the tripartite government of Lothair the
emperor, and his two brothers, whom we may for the future style by
their well-known names of Lewis the German and Charles the Bald,
though the latter style can hardly yet have been appropriate to the
Neustrian king, who had only just celebrated his twenty-first
birthday. His elder brothers were now much older men, Lothair
having attained his forty-fourth and Lewis his thirty-eighth year. Both
of them had now growing sons whom they were ere long to take as
colleagues in part of their realm.
The period from the Peace of Verdun, in 843, down to the
deposition of Charles the Fat, in 887, is the most chaotic and
perplexing portion of the history of Europe with which we have to
deal. For the fortunes of the various fractions of the Frankish empire
are bound up with the fortunes of the members of a much-ramified
royal house in which—with a lamentable want of originality—the
The same four names are continually recurring. We have
grandsons hitherto been confronted only with the three brothers
of Lewis —Lothair, Lewis, and Charles. Now each of these
the Pious.
brothers had three sons, and with a perversity which
the reader and the writer of history must alike deplore, each
christened his boys after their uncles. Lothair’s three sons were
Lewis, Charles, and Lothair; Lewis named his offspring Lewis,
Charles, and Carloman; and Charles, when at a later date he became
a father, followed the evil example by christening his children Lewis,
Charles, and Carloman also. The genealogical table must be kept
carefully before us, lest from the similarity of names we confuse the
imperial, the German, and the Neustrian houses of the Karlings.
 THE DESCENDANTS OF CHARLES THE GREAT.

The dates of the reigns of the three contentious brothers were, for
Lothair 843-855, for Lewis 843-876, for Charles 843-877. When they
had settled down after the Peace of Verdun, they found two
problems before them. The first was that of keeping the peace with
each other, in spite of all the grudges which the events of the last
fifteen years had raised between them. The second was that of
defending Western Christendom from the assaults from without,
which were daily growing more and more dangerous. The Danes,
whose first ravages we have related under the reign of Lewis the
Pious, were now becoming no longer a mere pest to the coastland,
but a serious danger to the whole empire. The Saracens were
commencing a series of daring piratical descents on Provence and
Italy. The Slavs beyond the Elbe were gradually throwing off their
allegiance to the empire, and recommencing the raids on Germany,
from which they had been stayed by Charles the Great.
For ten years (843-53) the three kings succeeded—contrary to all
expectation—in keeping the peace with each other. But in spite of
their temporary freedom from civil strife, they did not succeed in
defending their realms with success from the outer barbarian. As the
chronicler observed, ‘the slaughter of Fontenay seemed not only to
have thinned the ranks of the Frankish host, but to have robbed
them of their ancient invincibility in war.’ The only one of the three
kings who showed the slightest power to defend his borders was
Lewis the German: his two brothers suffered one continual series of
checks and disasters.
The The main problem which now confronted the
Vikings. Frankish rulers was the necessity for dealing firmly
with the invasion of the Scandinavian pirates. The peoples on both
shores of the Cattegat had now thrown themselves heart and soul
into the occupation of harrying the lands of their southern
neighbours. They were a group of kindred tribes, some of whom
dwelt in Jutland and the Danish isles, others on the southern and
south-eastern shore of the Scandinavian peninsula, others along the
fiords which face the German Ocean. Western Christendom often
styled them indiscriminately by the name of Danes, though in truth
the Danes were only the most southern of the four races which
joined in the invasions. A better common appellation was that of
Northmen, which would include the Swede, the Goth and the
Norwegian as well as the Danish dwellers in Jutland and Zealand.
From time immemorial the dwellers on the Cattegat and the
southern Baltic had been a sea-faring race. Tacitus, in the second
century of our era, speaks of Scandinavia as powerful by its fleets.
The Jutes and Angles who joined in the conquest of Britain had
sprung from these seas. The Danes had been addicted to piracy
from the earliest times. Far back in the sixth century, we have heard
of Viking chiefs, like king Hygelac whom Theudebert the Frank slew,
[55]
as occasionally descending on the Austrasian and Frisian shores.
But it was not till the end of the eighth century that western Europe
began to be seriously troubled by the Northmen. The cause of the
sudden increase of activity among races who had so long spared the
feeble realm of the later Merovings is difficult to ascertain. Perhaps
their constant wars with the Saxons, tribes as fierce and untameable
as themselves, had kept them quiet. But it is certain that down to
the time of Charles the Great they were mainly expending their
energy on wars with each other, and were seldom heard of in the
North Sea or the British Channel till the Frankish empire with its
wealth, its commerce, and its Christian propaganda came up to meet
them by subduing the Saxon and Frisian, and stretching forth its
boundary to the Eider.
55. See page 113.
Early It was just after Charles the Great had conquered
Viking Saxony that the Vikings began to make themselves
raids.
felt. The earliest trace of them in western waters was
a petty raid on the English town of Wareham in 789. Within a few
years, however, the scope of their expeditions enlarged; in 793 they
sacked the great Northumbrian monastery of Lindisfarn; in 795 they
are heard of in Ireland for the first time. In 799 they began their
assaults on the Frankish empire by a transient raid on Aquitaine.
From this time forward their activity grew incessantly; every year
their fleets discovered some new and rich field for plunder, till no
creek or estuary of western Europe was unknown to their pilots. We
have already told how Charles the Great was so vexed by their first
ravages that he endeavoured to establish a defensive flotilla in all
the ports of Neustria, and how in the last years of his reign the
Danish king Godfred had given him serious trouble both in the south
Baltic and on the Frisian shore.[56] We have mentioned the far more
important descents of the Vikings on the lands about the Rhine
mouth in the days of the feeble government of good king Lewis. But
now the evil was still growing: the emperor Lothair and his brothers
were to find the Northmen no longer a nuisance but a real danger.
56. See page 367.
Nothing could have been more daring than the enterprise of the
Northmen in setting out from their distant homes to undertake the
The ships long voyage to Ireland or Aquitaine. Their vessels
of the were merely long narrow open boats, generally some
Vikings. seventy-five feet long by fifteen broad, but drawing
only three-and-a-half feet of water. They relied on rowing more than
on sailing, and their one mast could easily be lowered, and generally
was taken down before a naval engagement. When the wind was
favourable they used a single large square sail, but it was always in
the strength and endurance of the oarsmen that they placed their
main confidence. The ordinary Viking vessel seems to have carried
about one hundred and twenty men, so that to transport any large
body an enormous number of ships was required. But even in small
numbers the Vikings were very formidable; they were all
professional warriors, who had taken by choice to the trade of sea-
robbers, and were individually far superior to the forced levies whom
English aldermen or Frankish counts could hurry into the field
against them. They were far better armed than their opponents,
almost every man being well equipped with the shirt of ring-mail and
steel helmet, while among the Franks and English only the nobles
and chiefs were as yet wearing armour. They were also fighting for
their lives: the pirate defeated in a strange country was completely
at the mercy of the people of the land, and always doomed to
death; hence he fought with a far greater fury than his enemies. But
at first the Viking came to pillage rather than to fight: he was better
pleased to plunder some rich undefended port or monastery and
then put out to sea, than to win precarious spoil after hard
handstrokes with the levies of an angry country-side.
By this time the Vikings were operating on every coast in western
Europe. It was not only the Franks who were suffering from their
inroads: the English kingdoms and the Celts of Scotland and Ireland
were faring even worse. The expeditions of the Northmen were now
taking two well-marked courses; one was the voyage past Frisia and
the Rhine-mouth to the Neustrian and south English coasts. The
other was a longer and bolder adventure, the open sea voyage from
the western capes of Norway to Orkney and Shetland, and thence
south-west, past the Hebrides, to Ireland, Wales, and western
England. The former line of plunder was mainly in the hands of the
Danes; the latter was more frequented by the Norwegians. The
other two northern peoples, the Swedes and Goths of the
Scandinavian peninsula, were almost entirely engrossed in cruises
eastward, against the Slavs and Finns of the Baltic.
 The In the earlier years of the Viking raids, Ireland
Vikings in suffered more than any other country; its tribal kings
Ireland. could give no protection to their subjects. There was
not a town in the island defended by a stone wall, and the numerous
and wealthy monasteries, protected by their sanctity alone, lay open
to the spoiler. The Norwegian pirates ranged at their good pleasure
over the face of the land, and ere long commenced to winter in it,
instead of returning home at the end of their summer ravages. It
was in Ireland that they first bethought them of seizing the whole
country and turning it into a new Norse kingdom. It was in the very
year of the Partition of Verdun that a great chief named Thorgisl
gained full possession of the northern half of the island, and
established himself as king therein. He reigned for two years (843-
45) with great success, till he fell by chance into the hands of
Malachy, king of Meath, who drowned him in Loch Owel. With his
death, his kingdom fell to pieces, and the Irish recovered much that
he had conquered from his divided followers. But the Norwegians
still clung to all the ports and headlands of Ireland: at Dublin,
Wexford, Waterford, Limerick, they built their towns and waged
continual war against the Irish of the inland parts.
England fared at first better than the sister isle. The great over-
king Ecgbert of Wessex was well able to defend his realm; most of
the Viking attacks were beaten off with loss as long as Ecgbert lived
(802-838). But under his weaker son Ethelwulf the invasions grew
more and more desperate and persistent, till in 850 we find the fatal
sign that the Vikings succeeded for the first time in wintering in the
land, fortifying themselves in the Kentish isle of Thanet, and defying
the fyrd of Wessex to force the narrow waterway that separated it
from the mainland.
The Danes in the Frankish empire had a far harder task than their
Norwegian brethren had found in Ireland, and for a long time they
showed much greater caution in venturing inland, or accepting battle
in the open field. They fled before the face of Lewis the Pious when
he marched against them in force, and it was only when the empire
was distracted by civil war that they began to strike boldly up the
great rivers and plunder the towns of the interior. It was of evil
import for the empire that just before the fight of Fontenay they had
sailed up the Seine and taken Rouen (841), and that just before the
pacification of Verdun they had entered the Loire and burnt the
great port of Nantes.
But when at last the Frankish kings had made peace, the Vikings
had grown so bold that they persisted none the less in their attacks
on the empire, and in the years that followed the new partition, their
successes were even greater than before. All the three brothers
were sorely beset by the Northmen, and two of them met with an
The Danes unbroken series of disasters. Lewis the German fared
in Saxony. best; the tough Saxon tribes on his frontier always
made a good fight against their hereditary enemies the Danes. But
the king saw the new town of Hamburg burnt in 845, so that its
bishop had to fly to Bremen, and in 851 a great expedition sailed up
the Elbe, defeated the Saxon counts in the open field and returned
in triumph to Jutland after ravaging the eastern half of Saxony.
Lothair and Charles fared far worse. The emperor saw his
coastland in Frisia ravaged every year. It was in vain that he tried to
gain peace by giving the island of Walcheren to Rorik the Dane, on
the condition that he should hold it as a fief and guard the coast
from his brethren. Other greedy adventurers followed Rorik, till the
whole Frisian coast was dotted with their palisaded forts, and their
ravages penetrated farther and farther inland, till Lothair in his
palace at Aachen began to tremble for his own safety.
But the lot of the young king Charles and of the Western Franks
was still less happy. His realm had a far greater length of exposed
coastland than those of his brethren, and he was vexed by a
lingering civil war, for Pippin of Aquitaine had never acquiesced in
the Partition of Verdun, and did his best to maintain himself among
his partisans south of the Loire. After much fighting he was
compelled for two years to do homage to Charles, but he soon rose
in arms again, and though his uncle had the better in the contest he
was still able to keep up an obstinate resistance. Charles thought
 The more of subduing Pippin than of warding off the
Vikings in Danes, and while he was engaged in Aquitaine the
France. northern parts of his realm were fearfully maltreated.
As early as 843 the Vikings found courage to winter in Neustria,
seizing and fortifying the monastery of Noirmoutier on an island at
the Loire-mouth. Next year they were enabled to strike far inland,
for Pippin, overborne by his uncle Charles, madly called in Jarl Oscar
to his aid, and brought the Vikings up the Garonne as far as
Toulouse. Thus introduced into the very heart of the land, they were
able both to spy out its fertility and wealth, and to judge of the
weakness and unwisdom of its rulers. It was not Aquitaine, however,
Sack of that first felt their heavy hand. In 845 they boldly
Paris. entered the Seine-mouth, plundered Rouen for the
second time, and then ascended the river far higher than they had
ever mounted before, up to the very walls of the city of Paris.
Charles dared not face them, but fortified himself on the heights of
Montmartre and the abbey of St. Denis, while the Vikings entered
Paris and plundered part of the city, till, stricken by an inexplicable
panic, they returned to their boats and dropped down the river
again. It was certainly not the army of Charles that they need have
feared, for he was thinking of paying tribute rather than of fighting.
Indeed he paid 7000 lbs. of gold to this particular horde to induce
them to quit Neustria altogether.
From this time onward things went from bad to worse for king
Charles, largely owing to his own faults as we may guess, for he was
a fickle unsteady prince, always taking new enterprises in hand and
dropping them suddenly for some fresh plan before he had half
carried them out. Nor was his courage beyond suspicion; more than
once in his reign he fled out of danger with an alacrity that savoured
more of fear than of prudence. After the sack of Paris we find the
Vikings hovering around Neustria on every side; one band had
established itself at the Loire-mouth, another under Jarl Oscar
watched the Garonne, another devoted itself to the harrying of
Flanders, and got succour when required from the emperor Lothair’s
Danish vassals on the isle of Walcheren. Spasmodically hurrying
about from one scene of Viking outrages to another, king Charles
protected nothing, and always arrived too late to be of use. In 847
even Bordeaux, the greatest city of southern Gaul, was beleaguered
Sack of by the Vikings of the Garonne. This drew him for
Bordeaux. some time into Aquitaine, where he for once won a
success, by subduing his nephew Pippin, who had lost his former
popularity among the Gascons by his drunken and dissolute habits,
and still more by his unwisdom in calling in the Danes to his aid. But
while Charles lay in Aquitaine he suffered a greater disaster than any
he had yet sustained, by the loss of Bordeaux, which was betrayed
to Jarl Oscar by a discontented party among its citizens.[57] It was to
be held for some years by the Vikings.
57. By Jews according to one account; by partisans of Pippin according to
another.
The plunder of such a wealthy place was well calculated to draw
more Danish hordes into Gaul. The condition of the country grew
progressively worse, and we trace every year the advance of the
ships of the invaders farther and farther up the great rivers. In 850
they grew so bold that they fortified themselves high up the Seine at
Givald’s dyke (Jeufosse), where they abode many months and
harried all the country about Beauvais and Mantes at their leisure.
Charles the Bald, engaged in a luckless campaign against the
rebellious duke of the Bretons, brought no succour to his subjects.
Nor was he on the spot when in the following year Ghent,
Térouanne, and all Flanders were wasted. But probably the capture
of his old enemy Pippin of Aquitaine atoned in his eyes for many
such disasters: the pretender was taken prisoner by the count of
Gascony, who handed him over to the king. In accordance with old
Frankish custom Pippin was shorn and thrust into a monastery.
The Danes The year 852 saw the kingdom of the West Franks
at Givald’s sink to a worse degradation than any it had yet
dyke.
known. When the Danes again came up the Seine and
settled down in their former camp at Givald’s dyke, Charles called
out the whole force of Neustria in such overwhelming strength that
the Vikings retired behind their palisades and stood on the
defensive. Presently the emperor Lothair with his warlike Austrasians
marched up to help his brother, and the doom of the Danes seemed
settled. But after a siege which lasted many months, Charles
suddenly made peace with Godfred the Danish chief and granted
him a great sum of money and a tract of land at the Loire-mouth to
settle in. Lothair and the Austrasians went home in wrath, and never
aided the fickle Neustrian king again.
When the Franks were faring so badly, only one more evil was
wanted to make their position unbearable, and this was soon added.
In 853 the ten years’ peace between the brothers, which had lasted
since the treaty of Verdun, was broken. The restless people of
Aquitaine, though they had lost their old leader Pippin, had
determined to try a new revolt. They secretly sent to ask aid of
Lewis the German, and he, though much vexed at home by Danish
raids and Slavonic rebellions, was unwise enough to grant their
Civil War petition. He sent his second son Lewis the Saxon, with
of Lewis a Suabian and Bavarian army, into Aquitaine, and
and declared war on his brother Charles. The emperor
Charles,
854. Lothair, with more sense than he usually showed,
tried to keep his brothers from the mad struggle. But
it was not owing to his efforts that the Germans finally consented to
retire from southern Gaul, but merely because the younger Lewis
met less support than he had expected from the Gascon rebels, and
found himself not strong enough to resist the full force of Neustria,
when his uncle took the field against him. But while this wholly
unjustifiable civil war was in progress, the Danes had made worse
havoc than ever in the midst of the kingdom of Charles. They burnt
Nantes and Tours, harried the districts around Angers and Blois, and
only checked their course before the walls of Orleans, which made a
sturdy and successful resistance (853-4).
Death of In the next year the last formal link which still held
Lothair, together the Frankish empire was snapped by the
855. death of the emperor Lothair. Old before his time, and
feeling himself utterly unable to cope with the evils of the day, he
retired into the monastery of Prüm, and died there only a few weeks
after he had taken the cowl. His heterogeneous empire at once fell
to pieces: his eldest son Lewis, who had already been crowned as
his colleague in the empire by pope Sergius II., was left nothing but
the kingdom of Italy with which to support his imperial title. To Italy
he was a good king, but beyond the Alps he met with neither
respect nor obedience. His younger brothers Lothair and Charles
divided between them the northern parts of their father’s heritage.
Lothair took Austrasia, Charles took Provence, and the intermediate
Burgundian territory was parted between them.
Thus the unity of the Empire had already become a mockery, and
the realm of Charles the Great was split into five kingdoms, owing
each other neither love nor homage nor succour in time of need.
 CHAPTER XXV

THE DARKEST HOUR—A.D. 855-887

FROM THE DEATH OF LOTHAIR I.

TO THE DEPOSITION OF CHARLES THE FAT
Civil Wars following the death of Lothair I.—King Lewis and his rule in Germany—
Troubles of Lothair II.—The Vikings in Neustria—The Edict of Pistres—Charles
the Bald invades Austrasia—Treaty of Mersen—Charles made Emperor—Death
of Lewis the German—War of his sons with Charles the Bald—Charles’s
successors in Neustria—Disastrous reign of Charles the Fat—He unites
Germany, France, and Italy—The siege of Paris—Charles the Fat dethroned.

Evil as had been the years which followed the fight of Fontenay and
the Partition of Verdun, there were yet worse to come. It was the
miserable peculiarity of the second half of the ninth century that it
saw Christendom, for the first time since the commencement of the
Dark Ages, begin to sink back towards primitive chaos and
barbarism. After four hundred years of vacillating but permanent
progress towards union, strength, and civilisation, it began to
relapse, and to fall back into disunion, weakness, and ignorance.
The reign of Charles the Great was to be for long years the high-
water mark of progress. The succeeding age rapidly sinks away from
it, and it is not till the middle of the tenth century that a rise is once
more perceptible.
But of all the evil years those between 855 and 887 were to be
the worst. The civil wars of the descendants of Lewis the Pious grew
yet more numerous and ruinous; the raids of the Viking and the
Saracen spread wider and wider; the rulers of the Frankish empire
were struck by a blight, dying young or sinking into imbecility long
before they attained middle age, till the race seemed destined to
disappear from history with the fall of the cowardly, unwieldy,
incompetent Charles the Fat in 887.
Civil war The new troubles began immediately on the death
on the of the emperor Lothair. His three sons could not agree
death of in the partition scheme which divided their father’s
Lothair I.
realm. Lewis thought that his share—the kingdom of
Italy—was far too small for the eldest son and the bearer of the
imperial title; Lothair II. grudged the share of Burgundy which fell to
his youngest brother Charles, and tried to seize the young man, in
order to tonsure him and confine him in a monastery. Before any
actual blow had been struck, pope Benedict III. succeeded in
patching up a truce between the brothers, but they drew apart and
sought alliances against each other, Lothair leaguing himself with his
younger uncle Charles the Bald, while Lewis became the friend of his
elder uncle and namesake Lewis of Germany. Two years later the
family grudge led to war under the most disastrous circumstances.
Charles and Lothair II. had united their forces for a decisive
campaign against the Danes, whose main army, under a certain Jarl
Biorn, had concentrated itself in central France, and burnt Paris,
Chartres, and Blois (857). Before the united strength of Neustria and
Austrasia the Vikings drew back, and stockaded themselves in a
great camp on the Seine-island of Oissel.[58] Charles blocked their
way down the river by bringing up a fleet, which he had lately built,
to the next reach, and determined to starve them out. After a siege
of three months it seemed likely that he would achieve his purpose;
the Danes could neither beat him nor escape him. But just as they
were about to yield there came to the king of Neustria the dire news
that his brother Lewis with the whole host of Germany had crossed
the Rhine, and was marching against him. Charles straightway raised
the siege of Oissel, allowed the Danes to burn his fleet and to
escape, and turned eastward to resist king Lewis. Their armies met
at Brienne-sur-Aube, but when Charles saw the overwhelming
numbers of the Germans his heart failed him—as it often did in such
a crisis—and he deserted his men and fled away into Burgundy.
Deprived of their leader his vassals laid down their arms, and most
of the Neustrian counts and bishops did homage to king Lewis. The
German monarch was able to take possession of his brother’s realm,
and to proclaim himself king of the West Franks. His nephew Lothair
II. sent to beg for peace from him, and it seemed that Lewis would
become the suzerain of all the realms north of the Alps. But when he
Lewis the had sent away his German troops, and prepared to
German winter near Laon among the Neustrians, the instability
wins and of his power was suddenly shown. Charles the Bald
loses
Neustria. had secretly raised a new army in Burgundy. He
marched on Laon at mid-winter. The Neustrians
refused to take arms against their old king, and Lewis, with a very
small following, had to flee away into Germany, and abandon his
lightly-won dominion over the West Franks. Eighteen months later
the brothers made peace (860), but no treaty could undo the harm
that the reckless ambition of Lewis had brought on all the Frankish
realms. While the war was raging the Danes had swept unresisted
across the land. One army had harried the Rhine-mouth and
Flanders, another had sacked Amiens and Noyon; a third had
entered the Mediterranean, sailed up the Rhone, and devastated the
distant kingdom of Charles of Provence, the younger brother of
Lothair II., a weakly youth racked by epileptic fits, who showed no
power to defend his fertile land from the pirates. The last-named
band had even extended their ravages to Italy, and sacked the
flourishing port of Pisa in the realm of the emperor Lewis II.
58. An island or peninsula, enclosed by the Seine and its marshes, near
Bougival, close to Paris, in department Seine-et-Oise.
From the time of his wicked invasion of Neustria onward, king
Lewis the German, who had hitherto been the most fortunate of the
Karling kindred, began to meet with troubles to which he had as yet
been a stranger. While his attention had been directed to the West,
his Slavonic vassals in the East, the Abotrites, rose in rebellion: when
he led a host against them in 862, he encountered defeat and
disaster. But a far worse blow came from the bosom of his own
family: his eldest son Carloman, whom he had made governor in
Carinthia and the Bavarian Ostmark, rose in rebellion against him.
Family Twice conquered and twice pardoned (861 and 863),
troubles of the ungrateful prince took arms for a third time in
Lewis the 864, and compelled his father to grant him a share in
German.
the kingdom. Feeling old age closing in upon him, and
hoping to conciliate all his sons, Lewis the German now took the
unwise step of dividing his realm in his own lifetime, just as his
father Lewis the Pious had done. He made Carloman king of Bavaria
and Carinthia, designated his second son and namesake Lewis to be
ruler of Saxony, Thuringia, and Franconia, and his youngest born
Charles the Fat to reign in Suabia and Rhaetia (865). He must have
felt that the hand of Heaven was laid upon him in punishment for his
own unfilial conduct to his father Lewis the Pious, for his sons dealt
with him just as he had dealt with the old emperor thirty years
before. They murmured about the boundaries of their heritages, and
often took arms both against him and against each other. Four
separate rebellions of one or another or all of the princes are
recorded between 865 and 876. But Lewis the German was made of
sterner stuff than his pious father. Time after time he beat down the
risings of his undutiful sons, and after each victory had the
constancy or the feebleness to restore them to their former honours.
In spite of these rebellions, and in spite of the successful revolt,
first of the Abotrites, and then of the Moravians, both of whom
succeeded in shaking off their dependence on the empire, Germany
was yet the most fortunate of the five Frankish realms. The subjects
of the three sons of Lothair I., who were now ruling the fragments of
their father’s ‘middle kingdom,’ all had evil times to endure. Of the
troubles of Lewis the emperor in Italy we shall speak elsewhere. His
two younger brothers fared even worse. The epileptic Charles of
Provence was vexed by Danish and Saracen pirates, as well as by
the intrigues of his greedy uncle Charles the Bald, who tried to add
Provence to his own Neustrian dominions, though he was entirely
unable to protect even Neustria from the Danes. Lothair II. in
Austrasia—or Lotharingia, as men now began to call it, after its
ruler’s name—was sore vexed by the Vikings, who pushed up the
The Rhine as far as Neuss and Köln. But he was far more
Bigamy of incommoded by a trouble for which he was himself
Lothair II. entirely responsible. He drove from his court his wife
Teutberga, and openly married his concubine Waldrada. Not only did
this bigamy lead to the rebellion of Teutberga’s brother Hukbert,[59]
abbot of St. Maurice and duke of Transjurane Burgundy, but it
brought on a quarrel with the Papacy which embittered all Lothair’s
remaining years. Pope Nicolas I. set his face against the king’s
unrighteous dealings with his wife, and repeatedly summoned him to
take her back to his couch. He induced the nobles of Lotharingia to
compel their king to dismiss Waldrada for a season; but Lothair was
passion’s slave, and soon chased away his wife and again sent for
his mistress. This brought on him fresh thunders of ecclesiastical
censure, and for the last ten years of his life he lived under the ban
of the Pope, till in 868 he was so far humbled that he came in
person before Hadrian II. and made a complete surrender—one of
the greatest triumphs that the Papacy had won since the days of
Gregory the Great.
59. Hukbert was one of the most extraordinary characters of the time, a warlike
abbot who maintained a whole harem of concubines at his fastness of St.
Maurice-en-Valais, and kept control of Vaud and Valais against all comers,
including his liege lord the king.
But though the other Frankish kingdoms fared ill, it was, as usual,
the realm of Charles the Bald which bore the brunt of the troubles of
Christendom. There were now permanent hosts of Danes established
at the mouth of each of the great rivers of France, the Somme,
Seine, Loire, and Garonne—the chronicles call them ‘pagani
Sequanenses’ or ‘pagani Ligerenses’ as a matter of course. Settled
on islands or headlands at the mouths of these rivers, each band
devoted itself to the harrying of the district which lay inland from its
camp. Meanwhile, Charles the Bald left the defence of his realm to
the local counts, and busied himself in futile schemes for seizing the
realms of his nephews, Charles of Provence and Lothair of Austrasia.
He was not without his family troubles; his children—like those of
Lewis the German—were very unruly: his second son Charles, who
ruled Aquitaine for him, tried to make himself an independent king,
and his youngest son Carloman was detected conspiring against his
life, for which he was condemned to blinding and perpetual
imprisonment. But neither domestic troubles nor Viking raids could
keep Charles from his unending intrigues against his brother and his
nephews. When he did turn his attention to his own proper business,
his methods of dealing with the problems that lay before him were
not generally wise. No man of real intelligence would have conceived
the plan that Charles invented in 861 for getting rid of the Vikings by
bribing them to fight each other. The wily pirates took the king’s
subsidy, and then all united against him, as might have been
expected.
There were, however, two schemes for organising resistance
against the Danes which were broached at Charles’s council board
that are worthy of note, as foreshadowing the methods by which the
invaders were ultimately to be checked. The great difficulty which
the Franks had hitherto found in dealing with the Vikings came
mainly from two reasons—the power of rapid movement which the
enemy possessed, and the fact that walled towns were still very
rare, and castles quite unknown in the Frankish realms, so that the
inhabitants of the country-side had no secure shelter to seek. In the
The Edict Edict of Pistres (864) Charles shows some
of Pistres, appreciation of these two difficulties, and endeavours
864. to dispose of them by very well judged measures. To
cope with the swiftly moving Vikings, he determines to make the
Frankish army more mobile also. He endeavours to substitute cavalry
for the unwieldy masses of local levies by ordering that ‘omnes
pagenses Franci qui equos habent aut habere possunt cum suis
comitibus in hostem eant.’ The day of feudal cavalry was indeed just
beginning, and from the military point of view this expedient was
perfectly correct; unhappily for the monarchy, the day of the feudal
horseman was also to be the day of feudal separation and disunion.
The second measure ordered by the Edict of Pistres was one for the
strengthening of the kingdom by means of fortifications. The
particular plan which Charles most favoured was that of blocking the
great rivers by fortified bridges. Towns lying beside the water were
to throw a bridge across, with a fortified bridgehead on the opposite
bank. Thus the Vikings would find their advance up the lines of the
rivers completely checked, since their boats would not be able to
pass under the bridges till the forts at either end of them were
taken, a long matter in those days, when the art of poliorcetics had
sunk so low. As the first fruits of this edict, a strong bridge was built
at Pistres itself, low down the Seine, where the Eure flows into the
great river. It was at the same time that the island on which old Paris
lay was furnished with two fortified bridges, across the northern and
southern branches of the Seine, joining it to the mainland. It was
mainly owing to these defences that, when next attacked by the
Vikings, Paris, though twice plundered before, held out successfully,
and did not suffer capture and desolation after its third siege.
In 863 died Charles, king of Provence, the youngest son of the
emperor Lothair I., carried off by the epilepsy that had always
afflicted him. His little kingdom was divided between his brothers
Lothair II. and Lewis the Emperor, to the great discontent of Charles
the Bald, who would have liked to have a hand in the partition. But
Charles was vexed for the moment not only by the Danes, but by his
nephew Pippin the Younger, who had escaped from his monastery
and raised a new rebellion in Aquitaine. While the king was dealing
with his nephew, the Vikings of the Loire made the widest sweep
round central France that any horde had yet carried out—burning
Poictiers, Angoulême, Perigueux, Limoges, Clermont, and Bourges in
The end of one single incursion. The rebel Pippin joined himself
Pippin of to them, and is actually said to have cast aside his
Aquitaine. Christianity and worshipped Woden in their camp—ex
monacho apostata factus, ritum paganorum servavit. He fell into his
uncle’s hands before the year was out, and with the general
approval of the Franks was condemned to perpetual solitary
confinement.
 For a short time after these events the West Frankish kingdom
was destined to have a time of comparative respite from the inroads
of the Northmen. In 867 all the Vikings of the West massed
themselves for an attack on England, which had hitherto suffered
comparatively little at their hands. From the capture of York in 868
down to Alfred’s great victory at Ethandune in 878, the main
strength of the Danes was spent in winning a kingdom beyond the
channel. The invasion of England was not for plunder but for
conquest, and ‘the Great Army,’ led by two kings and five jarls, was
composed of all the hordes who had been harrying the Continent for
the last ten years. If they did not succeed in subduing the whole of
England, they yet won the great Danelagh, the eastern half of the
island, and settled down in the land they had subdued.
But the comparative immunity from Viking raids which the Franks
obtained between 868 and 878 was not of much profit to them. In
869, Lothair II. died, as he was journeying home from Italy in a
disconsolate mood, after making his peace with the Pope.[60] From
that time there was unending trouble between his two elderly
uncles, as to which of them should inherit Austrasia, the old Frankish
land between Scheldt and Rhine, the ancestral home of their race. At
this moment began the struggle between France and Germany for
the inheritance of the ‘middle kingdom’ which Lothair had ruled, a
struggle which was to last for a thousand years. Who can say even
yet if the final fate of Aachen and Trier and Metz and Liége and
Strasburg has been settled?
60. See page 428.
The moment that Charles the Bald heard of Lothair’s death, he
crossed the Meuse at the head of the levies of Neustria, and had
himself crowned at Metz as king of Lotharingia. The Bretons were in
open revolt that year, and a stray Viking band was levying
contributions on Tours and Angers, but for such minor distractions
Charles cared little. Lewis the German was bedridden at the
moment, and his sons were absent on an expedition against the
Slavs. But next spring he took the field with all Germany at his back,
whereupon Charles the Bald, always better at seizing than at
Partition fighting, drew back, and offered to negotiate. Then
of Mersen, followed the Partition of Mersen, by which Lotharingia
870. was divided between the brothers: Charles took the
Burgundian part of his deceased nephew’s realm, and western
Austrasia as far as the Meuse; Lewis had Frisia and eastern
Austrasia. To Charles, therefore, fell Lyons, Vienne, Besançon, Toul,
Verdun, Cambrai, Liége, Tongern, Mecheln; to Lewis, Aachen, Köln,
Trier, Strasburg, Utrecht, Nimuegen, and Maestricht. (870.)
But the Treaty of Mersen was only to patch up matters for a short
time. Five years of comparative rest followed, while the Vikings were
still employed in England against the gallant kings of Wessex. But in
875 died the emperor Lewis II., the last of the three sons of Lothair I.
Like his two brothers, he left no male heir, and there followed one
more struggle between his aged uncles Lewis the German and
Charles the Bald for the imperial title and the Italian realm. Now, as
Charles always, Charles moved with rash and inconsiderate
the Bald in haste, and was first in the field. Leaving Neustria to
Italy, 875. shift for itself, he posted into Italy at the head of a
small army, and swooped down on the diet of the Lombard kingdom,
which was sitting at Pavia, and disputing about the choice of a
successor to their late monarch. He was acclaimed as king by some
of the Lombards, and then made ready to march on Rome, where he
knew that the Pope was ready to give him the imperial crown. But,
meanwhile, Lewis the German was preparing to interfere. He first
sent his youngest son Charles of Suabia—better known as Charles
the Fat—to oppose the Neustrian king. But Charles, who always
throughout his life consistently mismanaged everything that was
intrusted to him, was easily scared by his uncle, and fled back into
the Alps. Then the king of Germany sent down into Lombardy his
unruly eldest born, Carloman the king of Bavaria, with an imposing
array of Bavarian and Franconian levies. Charles the Bald feared to
face this army, and proposed to Carloman that both the Neustrian
and the German forces should withdraw from the peninsula, and
allow the disputed succession to be settled by peaceful negotiation.
The Bavarian prince was beguiled by his uncle’s specious offer, and
betook himself homeward over the Brenner. But, instead of making a
corresponding retreat towards the Cenis, Charles the Bald turned
southward and made a dash for Rome. He reached it, and was duly
crowned emperor by his friend John VIII. But he did not linger in Italy
to help the Pope against the Saracens, as the latter besought him,
but returned at once to Neustria to exhibit his new imperial crown at
home.
Death of At this moment died Lewis the German, now an old
Lewis the man of seventy-six; it was sixty years since he had
German, been appointed king of Bavaria by his father, and
876.
thirty-three since he had obtained sway over the
whole of Germany by the award of the Treaty of Verdun. He had
been on the whole a successful ruler, in spite of the many revolts of
his sons, and in spite of the fact that he had not been able to retain
all his Slavonic vassals under his hand. To him more than to any
other king Germany owed her organisation as a unified national
kingdom. His long reign gave Saxon and Franconian, Bavarian and
Suabian, time to grow together and to learn to regard themselves as
a nation apart, not merely as provinces of the Frankish empire. But if
to Germany his reign was one of unqualified good, history can not
pardon him the two occasions in 854 and 858 when he deliberately
sacrificed the general welfare of Christendom to private ambition,
and attacked his Neustrian brother while Charles was in the thick of
his Viking wars. These are the darkest spots on the reputation of the
first king of Germany.
We have already related how Lewis, following the evil custom of
his family, had divided his realm among his three sons Carloman,
Lewis, and Charles, the kings of Bavaria, Saxony, and Suabia. They
were not destined, however, to inherit their father’s realm in peace.
No sooner did Charles the Bald hear that his elder brother was dead,
than he made another vigorous attempt to seize Lotharingia, arguing
that as emperor he was entitled to the imperial city of Aachen, and
openly asserting that the oaths of Mersen had been ‘sworn to the
father but not to the sons.’ At the head of a large army Charles
entered Austrasia, and occupied Aachen and Köln. Of the three
young kings of Germany Lewis alone came out against him.
Carloman was away far in the East fighting with rebellious Slavs, and
Charles the Fat was, or purported to be, on a bed of sickness. The
Charles fate of the lands between Rhine and Scheldt was
the Bald settled by a battle at Andernach, in which the
beaten at Neustrians, though superior in number, were
Andernach.
completely defeated by the Franconians and Saxons
of Lewis of Saxony. Charles the Bald was—as usual—
the first to fly, and arrived in safety at Liége, though the greater part
of his army was cut to pieces. He returned to his home to find a
Danish fleet up the Seine, for the Vikings were just beginning to drift
back from England. But such troubles moved him little, and though
his Austrasian expedition had fared so ill, he started off with hardly a
moment’s pause on an equally rash and ill-judged descent into Italy,
where the imperial crown that he had so lightly gained in 875 was
now in jeopardy. He sent the Vikings 5000 lbs. of silver to induce
them to transfer their ravages from Neustria to his German nephew’s
land, and hastened to Lombardy with a small and hastily equipped
army, for the best of his men had been slain or captured at the
battle of Andernach. Charles met his friend pope John VIII. at Pavia,
and was about to proceed to Rome when he heard that his eldest
nephew, Carloman of Bavaria, who possessed many supporters
among the eastern Lombards, had crossed the Alps and was
marching against him, eager to revenge the treachery to which he
Charles had been subjected in the preceding year. Charles
dies in hastily fled before the approaching forces of the
Italy, 877. Bavarian, but as he was crossing the Cenis he was
stricken down by dysentery, and died suddenly in a miserable hut at
the foot of the pass (877).
Charles the Bald was still below the age of sixty, but he had been
a king from his boyhood, and had reigned over the West Frankish
realm which the treaty of Verdun gave him for thirty-four disastrous
years. Of all the Karlings he was the man who wrought the empire
the most harm: his birth had been a misfortune: the endowment of
his youth cost the state a long civil war: his manhood was flighty,
unscrupulous, eager, yet unstable. He started four several wars by
reckless snatching at the heritages of his kinsmen, but when
withstood and faced he always slunk away in rapid retreat. The
condition of Neustria was a disgrace to his name: if half the bribes
and subsidies that he had spent to buy the Danes’ departure, had
been used in military preparations against them, they might easily
have been driven off. But Charles was always busied with fantastic
schemes of foreign conquest; and while his eyes were fixed abroad
he allowed his realm to fall to pieces at his feet. History can find
nothing to praise in the first king of France.
In the ten years which followed the death of Charles the Bald, a
blight seemed to fall upon the house of the Karlings. King after king
was swept away by an untimely death, some by accident, more by
disease. In France and in Germany six reigning monarchs died
without leaving a single child of legitimate birth, and by 887 the
royal house was represented by one solitary male heir, and he a boy
of only eight years old. Meanwhile the Danes had returned from
England in full force, and the whole empire of these short-lived kings
was enduring the worst crisis that had yet fallen upon it.
Reign and Charles the Bald was succeeded in Neustria and
death of Aquitaine, or France, as we may now call the Western
Lewis the realm, by his son Lewis II., better known as Lewis the
Stammerer,
877-879. Stammerer. The new king was a prudent and
circumspect ruler, very unlike his flighty parent. He at
once gave up all pretension to the kingdom of Italy and the imperial
crown, though John VIII. urged him to reassert his father’s claims. He
promptly made peace with his German cousins, renewing with them
the terms of the Treaty of Mersen, by which eastern Lotharingia fell
to Germany and western Lotharingia to France. He then took the
field against the Danes, who had just returned once more to the
mouth of the Loire, but while engaged with them he was stricken
down by disease, and died a few months later, long before he had
completed the second year of his reign (879). He left two sons,
Lewis and Carloman, and a third child was born to him just after his
death, and christened Charles. The counts and bishops of France,
following the invariable and unhappy custom of the times, crowned
both Lewis and Carloman as kings. The two lads—they were but
seventeen and sixteen—were not to enjoy a quiet heritage. Alfred
had just expelled from England those of the Danish ‘Great Army’
who had refused to settle down in the Danelagh and do him
Accession homage. The swarm of Vikings fell on Flanders, and
of Lewis III. burnt Ghent and St. Omer before the young kings’
and reign was two months old. At the same time Lewis of
Carloman,
879. Saxony, on whom the spirit of greed that had
possessed Charles the Bald seemed now to have
descended, invaded Neustria—summoned, it would appear, by some
disloyal counts. But the West Franks rallied around their young
masters, and Lewis the Saxon consented to retire on condition that
Western Lotharingia—the lands that Charles the Bald had acquired
by the Treaty of Mersen ten years before—should be ceded to him.
So Liége, Namur, Cambrai, and Tongern became for the moment
German and not French.
In another part of the West Frankish realm an equally serious loss
was at the same time taking place. Since the death of the good
emperor Lewis II. Provence and southern Burgundy had been united
to Neustria (875-79). But Lewis’ only daughter, the princess
Hermengarde, had now found a strong and ambitious husband in
Boso, count of Vienne, one of the governors of Burgundy. Taking
advantage of the crisis in Neustria, this count Boso resolved to assert
his wife’s claim to her father’s heritage. In Italy he failed to win
success, though the Pope would gladly have helped him, but in
Provence and Lower Burgundy the nobles rallied to his standard. He
Boso made was proclaimed king in October 879, and afterwards
king of crowned at Lyons. His new realm of Arles, Provence,
Arles, 879. or Lower Burgundy—for it is found styled by all these
names—was the first fraction of the empire of Charles the Great to
pass away from the male heirs of the great royal line. Boso’s
dominions nearly coincided in size with the kingdom of Provence as
it had been held by Charles the son of the emperor Lothair I. They
included the whole valley of the Rhone, from Lyons to the sea and
the borders of Italy.
While the West Frankish kingdom was being cut short to north and
south, Germany was on the whole in better condition. The three
sons of Lewis the German, unlike most royal brothers of the time,
dwelt together in harmony. The two elder brothers had come to an
agreement that Carloman should prosecute his fortunes in Italy,
while Lewis sought to aggrandise himself in Lotharingia. But
Carloman, after driving Charles the Bald out of Lombardy, and
mastering most of the land north of the Po, was stricken down with
a fever which terminated in a paralytic stroke. He was carried back
to Bavaria, and survived for two years, but never rose from his
couch again. Feeling the hand of death upon him, he handed over
the administration of his realm to his brother Lewis, only stipulating
that the frontier duchy of Carinthia should be given to his own
illegitimate son Arnulf, the child of a Slavonic princess whom he had
taken as his concubine. Carloman lived out another year, and died in
880 before he had passed the limits of middle age.
Charles Meanwhile, his place in Italy had been taken by his
the Fat, shiftless younger brother, the king of Suabia. Charles
king of the Fat entered Italy in the autumn of 879, was
Italy, 879.
everywhere recognised as king, and solemnly received
the Lombard crown from John VIII. at Ravenna. But his new kingdom
saw little of him: though he was earnestly besought to oppose the
Saracen invaders of the south he did nothing of the kind, but went
ingloriously home to Suabia.
The Danes were by this time mustering in greater strength than
ever for an assault on the Frankish empire. They had gathered
together from all the shores of the West, and this time threw
themselves on the Eastern realm, not on their old prey in Neustria.
Great The year 880 was long remembered by the Germans
Danish for the awful defeat suffered on the Lüneburg Heath
Invasion, near Hamburg by the levies of Saxony and Thuringia.
880.
Bruno, duke of Saxony, two bishops, with no less than
twelve counts, were left dead upon the field, and the victorious
Vikings ravaged the whole valley of the Elbe without further
resistance. Almost at the same moment another Danish army
appeared in Austrasia, fought an indecisive battle with king Lewis,
and though they left him the field were able to establish themselves
permanently on the Scheldt, at a great camp near Courtray,
threatening Neustria and Austrasia alike.
Battle of In the spring of 881 they made up their minds that
Saucourt, the Western realm should first be their spoil. Marching
881. on Beauvais, they met at Saucourt the young king of
France and his levies. To the joy and surprise of all Western
Christendom Lewis III. inflicted a crushing defeat on the invaders,
slew 8000 of them, and chased them as far as Cambrai, beyond the
borders of his own kingdom. This was the only pitched battle of first-
rate importance that the Franks had won over the Vikings, and great
hopes were entertained that in Lewis III. Europe might find a saviour
from the sword of the pagans. But ere a year was out the gallant
young king met his death in a foolish frolic,[61] and left the Neustrian
throne to his brother Carloman.
61. Lewis was a sprightly youth and given to affairs of love, ‘and it chanced one
day that in sport he chased a certain damsel, the daughter of Germund. She
fled in at her father’s gate, and the king followed her, laughing. But he forgot
to stoop sufficiently at the portal, and was crushed between the roof and the
high pommel of his saddle, so that he died within a few days.’
The Danish army which had been defeated at Saucourt retired to
Ghent, where it was strengthened by newly-arrived bands under two
famous sea-kings, Siegfred and Godfred. Then the host threw itself
on Austrasia as the autumn was closing. The levies of the old royal
land of the Franks were beaten: their king, Lewis of Saxony, was far
away, and the winter months of 881-2 saw the whole country-side
Austrasia harried, from the Scheldt-mouth to the Eifel. The
harried by inland parts of Austrasia had hitherto been
the Danes.
exceptionally fortunate in escaping the Danish sword,
but in this fatal winter Liége, Maestricht, Tongern, Köln, Bonn,
Neuss, Zülpich, Malmédy, Nimuegen, and every other town in the
district was pillaged. Most heartrending of all was the sacking of the
royal city of Aachen: the Danes plundered the palace, stabled their
horses in the cathedral, and broke the shrine and image above the
tomb of Charles the Great.
To the despair of all Germany, king Lewis the Saxon, whose task it
should have been to attack the invaders in the next spring, died on
January 20th, 882—the fourth Carolingian monarch who had been
carried to the grave within three years. His subjects found nothing
better to do than to elect his only surviving brother, Charles the Fat,
the king of Suabia and of Italy, as his successor.
Charles Thus began the unhappy reign of Charles, the last
the Fat, Carolingian emperor of the full blood. He was at this
king of moment in Italy, where he had been visiting Rome
Germany.
and receiving the imperial crown. Making a leisurely
journey homeward,—the Danes were meanwhile sacking Trier and
Metz,—he reached the Rhine in July, and summoned to him the
levies of Saxony, Suabia, Bavaria and Franconia: he had brought a
Lombard army in his train. With this great host, the largest that had
been seen since the death of Charles the Great, he moved against
the Danes. Godfred and Siegfred retired before him to a great camp
which they had built at Elsloo on the Meuse. The faint-hearted
emperor faced them for twelve days, and then instead of ordering
his vast army to assault the camp, began to negotiate with the
enemy. A few days later his soldiery heard to their dismay and
disgust, that Charles had consented to allow the Vikings to withdraw
with all their plunder, to pay them 2000 lbs. of silver, and to grant
king Godfred a great duchy by the Rhine-mouth, with the hand of
his cousin Gisela, an illegitimate daughter of king Lothair II. In return
the Dane consented to be baptized and to do homage to the
Treaty of emperor. This expedient for buying off Godfred was
Elsloo, probably suggested by the way in which Alfred of
882. England had dealt with Guthrum four years before at
the peace of Wedmore. Unfortunately Charles forgot that while
Alfred was strong enough to compel Guthrum to keep faith, his own
character was hardly likely to have a similar influence on Godfred.
 King Siegfred, with those of the Danes who did not wish to settle
down by the Rhine-mouth, took their way from Elsloo into Neustria.
Charles the Fat had merely stipulated for the evacuation of his own
kingdom, and cared nought for what might happen to his cousin
Carloman. The winter of 882-3 was as disastrous for northern France
as that of 881-2 had been for the Rhineland. From Rheims to Amiens
and Courtray, the whole country-side was harried: king Carloman
and his nobles, instead of copying the conduct of Lewis III., and
remembering the triumph of Saucourt, followed the miserable
example of Charles the Fat, and paid the invaders the enormous
bribe of 12,000 lbs. of silver to induce them to transfer themselves
to Austrasia, England, Ireland, or any other realm that they might
choose. In the moment of rest obtained by the temporary departure
of the pirates, Carloman died, ere yet he had reached his twentieth
year. He was accidentally slain by one of his companions, while
hunting the boar in a forest near Les Andelys (884). The Carolingian
line was now well-nigh spent: five kings had died in five years, and
the only males surviving were the shiftless emperor Charles the Fat,
and Carloman’s younger brother, a child of five, the posthumous son
of Lewis the Stammerer, the prince whom the next generation was
to know as Charles the Simple.
Charles Rather than face the horrors of a minority, the West
the Fat Franks sent to the emperor and besought him to take
inherits up the kingship of Neustria. All the empire that had
Neustria,
884. obeyed Charles the Great was therefore united once
more beneath a single sceptre, save the little realm of
king Boso, in Provence. But Charles the Fat was a sorry substitute
for his great namesake. The three years of his reign over the whole
of the Frankish kingdoms (884-7) were fated to shatter the last
remnants of loyalty in the breasts of the subjects of the empire, and
to cause them to cast away the old royal house in despair, and seek
new saviours and new kings.
The history of these three evil years is easily told. Hearing of the
death of Carloman, the Danes flocked back to Neustria: ‘oaths sworn
to a dead man,’ they said, ‘did not count.’ But their return was chiefly
caused by a thorough beating which their main body had suffered at
Rochester from the strong hand of king Alfred. At the same time the
converted Viking Godfred rose in rebellion on the Lower Rhine. He
impudently bade the emperor give him the rich lands about Bonn
and Coblenz, ‘because his duchy had no vineyards to yield him wine.’
Charles did not take arms against him, but sent ambassadors to lure
him to a conference. When the Dane appeared, the counts Henry
and Eberhard treacherously cut him down, and massacred his
retinue. The army of Godfred broke up; some of his warriors went
plundering in Saxony, where they were cut to pieces, the rest joined
king Siegfred, who was just about to invade Neustria (885).
Great The great host of the Vikings had once more united
Siege of itself under Siegfred, and entered north France, as if
Paris. designing to subdue the whole country and settle
down therein. But they met with an unexpected resistance at Paris,
where the local count and bishop, Odo and Gozelin, had gathered
together all the best warriors of Neustria. The defence of Paris was
the bravest feat of arms which the Franks had wrought since the
battle of Saucourt. They maintained the isle of Paris, with its two
fortified bridge-heads over the two branches of the Seine, for more
than eleven months, against all the assaults of the Northmen (Nov.
885-Oct. 886). Seven hundred Viking keels were drawn ashore on
the flat land where the Champ de Mars now lies, and 40,000 Vikings
beset the city on all sides. But though shamefully abandoned by the
emperor—who chose the time as suitable for a journey to Italy—Odo
and Gozelin refused to despair, even when the northern bridge-head
was cut off from the city by an inundation, and burnt by the
besiegers.
At last, in the summer of 886, Charles the Fat so far bestirred
himself as to raise the national levies of the whole empire, and
march to the relief of Paris with an army not less than that which he
had led four years earlier against the camp of Elsloo. But when his
vanguard received a check, and its leader, Henry, duke of Franconia,
was slain, the emperor refused to risk an attack on the Danes. Once
more the disgraceful scene of Elsloo was renewed: Charles paid the
 Charles Danes 700 lbs. of silver, and gave them permission to
the Fat pass up the Seine into Burgundy, and work their will
bribes the there. He was angry with the Burgundians for refusing
Danes.
him obedience and leaning to the cause of Boso, the
king of Arles, and chose this despicable means of wreaking his
vengeance on them.
Paris was saved, and the reputation of its gallant defender, count
Odo, raised to the highest pitch. But the emperor had thrown away
his last chance, and forfeited the respect of even the meanest of his
subjects. His remaining days were few and evil. Attacked by
softening of the brain, and burdened by an ever-increasing
corpulence, he retired to Germany after the disgraceful treaty of
Paris. There his doom was awaiting him: the counts and dukes of
the East Frankish realm conspired against him, headed by his
illegitimate nephew Arnulf, duke of Carinthia, the son of king
Carloman. In 887 the young duke took up arms, openly announcing
that he was about to march on Frankfurt and depose his uncle.
Abdication Charles tried to raise an army, but none of his vassals
of Charles would lend him aid: in sheer despair he sent his royal
the Fat. crown and robes to Arnulf, abandoning the kingdom,
and craving only five manors in his native Suabia to maintain him for
his few remaining days. This boon the duke granted, and the
unwieldy ex-Caesar dragged himself away to a royal villa at
Neidingen, where he died less than three months after, worn out by
the bodily ills which form the only possible excuse for his shiftless
and cowardly conduct during the last three years.
Meanwhile Arnulf entered Frankfurt, and was there hailed as king
by all the counts and dukes of Germany. He was known as a brave
Arnulf, and able young man, and though he was but a Karling
king of of bastard blood, the East Franks gladly intrusted
Germany, themselves to the protection of his arm. But the other
888-899.
parts of the empire did not consider themselves
bound to follow the lead of Germany. In each of the kingdoms a
noble of great local note and power stepped forward to claim the
crown of his native land.
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