CHAPTER III.
THE CAROLINGIAN KINGDOMS (877-918).
The death of Charles the Bald did not ensure the triumph of Carloman, who was soon forced by an epidemic which broke out in his army to make the best of his way back to Germany. It seemed, however, as if it would be the signal for renewed civil discord in Gaul. When Louis the Stammerer received news at Orville near Laon of the pitiable end of his father, he hastened, without the assent of the magnates, to distribute to such of his partisans as happened to be around him, "honours," counties, estates and abbeys, thus violating an engagement made at Quierzy. Accordingly, when he was about to go into Francia to receive the oath of fidelity from his new subjects, he learned that the magnates, rallying round Boso and the Abbot Hugh, and supported by the widowed Empress Richilda, refused him obedience, and, as a sign of their displeasure, were ravaging the country. Nevertheless, thanks, no doubt, to the mediation of Hincmar, and after some time had been spent in arranging terms, the rebels agreed to a settlement. Richilda was reconciled to her step-son, handing over to him the royal insignia and the deed by which Charles the Bald before his death had nominated his heir. The magnates, whose rights the king promised to recognise, all made their submission. The Abbot Hugh even became one of the most influential counsellors of Louis the Stammerer. On 8 December, after having sternly exhorted the new sovereign to respect the rights of his vassals, Hincmar crowned him King of the West-Franks in the church of Compiègne.
Louis, however, was not the man to carry out his father's imperialist policy, in spite of the opportunity which occurred for it the next year. Anarchy set in more fiercely than ever in Italy. Carloman had obtained from his brothers the cession of their rights over the peninsula, in exchange for those which he possessed over Lorraine in virtue of a partition treaty concluded the year before (877), but he was in no plight to attempt another expedition. Lambert, Duke of Spoleto, and his brother-in-law Adalbert, Duke or Marquess of Tuscany, were making open war upon John VIII, and plainly intended to bring back
