assembly, as may be imagined, never came together, and the Archbishop of Metz was forced to resign himself to a purely honorary vicariate.
Lothar met with no better success in his attempt to restore his ally, Ebbo, to his archiepiscopal throne at Rheims, whence he had been expelled in 835 as a traitor to the Emperor Louis, though no successor had yet been appointed. The Pope turned a deaf ear to all representations on Ebbo's behalf, and the Council at Ver entreated Charles to provide the Church of Rheims with a pastor without delay. This pastor proved to be the celebrated Hincmar[1] who for nearly forty years was to be the most strenuous and illustrious representative of the episcopate of Gaul.
Thus the attempts made by Lothar to obtain anything in the nature of supremacy outside the borders of his own kingdom had met with no success. They even had a tendency to bring about a renewal of hostilities between him and his youngest brother. But the bishops surrounding the three kings had a clear conception of the Treaty of Verdun as having been made not only to settle the territorial problem, but also to secure the continuance of peace and order. The magnates themselves were weary of civil war, and had, besides, enemies from without to contend against, Slavs, Saracens, Bretons and, above all, Northmen. They were of one mind with the prelates in saying to the three brothers "You must abstain from secret machinations to one another's hurt, and you must support and aid one another." Consequently a new system was established called with perfect correctness "the system of concord," of concord secured by frequent meetings between the three brothers.
The first of these interviews took place at Yütz, near Thionville, in October 844, at the same time as a synod of the bishops of the three kingdoms under the presidency of Drogo. Here the principles governing the "Carolingian fraternity" were at once laid down. The kings, for the future, are not to seek to injure one another, but on the contrary, are to lend one another mutual aid and assistance against enemies from outside.
The king most threatened at the time by enemies such as these was Charles the Bald. In 842 the Northmen had pillaged the great commercial mart of Quentovic near the river Canche[2]. In the following year they went up the Loire as far as Nantes which they plundered, slaughtering the bishop during the celebration of divine service. The Bretons, united under their leader Nomenoë, and not much impressed by an expedition sent against them in 843, were invading Frankish
- ↑ Hincmar, who was born during the first years of the ninth century, was at this time a monk at Saint-Denis and entrusted with the government of the Abbeys of Notre-Dame by Compiègne and Saint-Germer de Flay. But Charles had already employed him on various missions, and he seems for some years to have held an important position among the king's counsellors.
- ↑ Chapter XIII deals with the Vikings. They are therefore mentioned here only so far as is necessary to an understanding of the general history of the Frankish kingdoms.
