CHAPTER II.
THE CAROLINGIAN KINGDOMS (840—877).
The death of Louis the Pious and his clearly expressed last wishes secured the imperial dignity to Lothar. But the situation had not been defined with any precision. The last partition, decreed in 839, had made important alterations in the shares assigned to the three brothers. Now what Lothar hastened to claim was "the empire such as it had formerly been entrusted to him," namely, the territorial power and the pre-eminent position secured to him by the Constitutio of 817, with his two brothers reduced to the position of vassal kinglets. To make good these claims Lothar had the support of the majority of the prelates, always faithful, in the main, to the principle of unity. But the great lay lords were guided only by considerations of self-interest. In a general way, each of the three brothers had on his side those who had already lived under his rule, and whom he had succeeded in winning over by grants of honours and benefices. Louis had thus secured the Germans, Bavarians, Thuringians and Saxons, and Charles the Neustrians, Burgundians, and such of the Aquitanians as had not espoused the cause of Pepin II. But it would be a mistake to see in the wars which followed the death of Louis the Pious a struggle between races. As a contemporary writes, "the combatants did not differ either in their weapons, their customs, or their race. They fought one another because they belonged to opposite camps, and these camps stood for nothing but coalitions of personal interests."
Lothar received the news of his father's death as he was on his way to Worms. He betook himself to Strasbourg, and in that town the oath of fealty was sworn to him by many of the magnates of ancient Francia who were still loyal to the Carolingian family and to the system of a united empire, being vaguely aware that this system would secure the predominance of the Austrasians from among whom Charles and Louis the Pious had drawn almost all the counts of their vast empire. But Louis the German, on his part, had occupied the country as far as the Rhine, and Charles the Bald was also making ready for the struggle. Lothar had not resolution enough to attack his two brothers one after the other and force them to accept the re-establishment of the Constitutio of 817. He first had an interview beyond the Rhine with
