Louis, concluding a truce with him until a forthcoming assembly should meet, at which the conditions of a permanent peace were to be discussed. Then he marched against Charles, many of the magnates of the district between the Seine and the Loire joining him, among others Gerard, Count of Paris, and Hilduin, Abbot of Saint-Denis. But Charles, being skilfully advised by Judith and other counsellors, among them an illegitimate grandson of Charles the Great, the historian Nithard, opened negotiations and succeeded in obtaining terms which left him provisionally in possession of Aquitaine, Septimania, Provence and six counties between the Loire and the Seine. Lothar, besides, arranged to meet him at the palace of Attigny in the ensuing May, whither Louis the German was also summoned to arrange for a definitive peace.
The winter of 840-841 was spent by the three brothers in enlisting partisans and in gathering troops. But when spring came, Lothar neglected to go to Attigny. Only Louis and Charles met there. An alliance between these two, both equally threatened by the claims of their elder brother, was inevitable. Their armies made a junction in the district of Châlons-sur-Marne, while that of Lothar mustered in the Auxerrois. Louis and Charles marched together against the Emperor, proposing terms of agreement as they came, and sending embassy after embassy to exhort him "to restore peace to the Church of God." Lothar was anxious to spin matters out, for he was expecting the arrival of Pepin II (who had declared for him) and of his contingent of Aquitanians, or at least of southern Aquitanians, for those of the centre and north were induced by Judith to join Charles the Bald. On 24 June, Pepin effected his junction with the Emperor. The latter now thought himself strong enough to wish for a battle. He sent a haughty message to his younger brothers, reminding them that "the imperial dignity had been committed to him, and that he would know how to fulfil the duties it laid upon him." On the morning of the 25th, the fight began at Fontenoy[1] in Puisaye, and a desperate struggle it proved. The centre of the imperial army, where Lothar appeared in person, stood firm at first against the troops of Louis the German. On the left wing the Aquitanians of Pepin II long held out, but Charles the Bald, reinforced by a body of Burgundians who had come up, under the command of Warin, Count of Mâcon, was victorious against the right wing, and his success involved the defeat of Lothar's army. The number of the dead was very great, a chronicler puts it at 40,000. These figures are exaggerated, but it is plain that the imagination of contemporaries was vividly impressed by the carnage "wrought on that accursed day, which ought no longer to be counted in the year, which
- ↑ Much discussion has arisen over the identification of the place which Nithard calls Fontanetum. The various contentions are summed up in Charles le Chauve (Lot and Halphen), p. 29, no. 6. It is nearly certain that the Fontenoy in question is that situated in dép. Yonne, arr. Auxerre, cant. Saint-Sauveur.
