Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/193

The Disruption of Charlemagne's Empire 157 the case should be decided by the power of the sword and so proved by the judgment of God. On the twenty-fifth of June a great battle was fought between them, and the blood shed on both sides was so great that the present age remembers no such carnage among the Frankish people before. On the same day Lothaire began a retreat to his city of Aix-la- Chapelle. Louis and Charles seized his camp and collected and buried the bodies of their slain. They then parted; Charles remained in the west and Louis went in the month of August to the royal town Salz. Lothaire again collected his forces from all sides. He went to Mayence and ordered the Saxons, with his little son Lothaire, to meet him at Speyer. He himself crossed the Rhine, intending to pursue his brother Louis to the confines of the outlying nations. He returned to Worms, unsuccessful. He celebrated there the marriage of his daughter, and then marched toward Gaul to subdue Charles. He spent the whole winter in fruitless effort and strife and then returned to Aix. On the twenty-fifth of December a comet appeared in the sign of Aquarius. (843) Lothaire and Louis dwelt each in the confines of his 69. The own kingdom and kept the peace. Charles was marching JJJJjJj^ about Aquitaine. ... In the terrible and increasing calam- ( From the ' ities of the time and the general devastation, many men in various parts of Gaul were forced to eat a kind of bread made of earth and a little flour. It was an abominable crime that men should be reduced to eat earth, when the horses of those who were devastating the land were plenti- fully supplied with fodder. Pirates of the Northmen's race came to the city of Nantes. They killed the bishop and many of the clergy and laity, both men and women, and plundered the city. Then they marched away to lay waste the land of lower Aquitaine. Finally they reached a certain island [Rhe', near Rochelle], and took thither from the mainland materials to build them houses; and they settled there for the winter as if it were a fixed habitation.