crowns Louis the Pious in 814 While at his palace of Doué, Anjou, Louis received news of his father's death. He rushed to
Aachen and crowned himself emperor to shouts of
Vivat Imperator Ludovicus by the attending nobles. '' of Louis He quickly sent all of his many unmarried (half-)sisters and nieces to nunneries in order to avoid any possible entanglements from overly powerful brothers-in-law. He made
Bernard, margrave of Septimania, and
Ebbo,
Archbishop of Reims his chief counsellors. The latter, born a serf, was raised by Louis to that office, but betrayed him later. He retained some of his father's ministers, such as
Elisachar, abbot of
St. Maximin near
Trier, and
Hildebold, Archbishop of Cologne. Later he replaced Elisachar with
Hildwin, abbot of many monasteries. He also employed
Benedict of Aniane (the Second Benedict), a Septimanian
Visigoth, whom he made abbot of the newly established
Inden Monastery at
Aix-la-Chapelle and charged him with the reform of the Frankish church. One of Benedict's primary reforms was to ensure that all religious houses in Louis's realm adhered to the
Rule of Saint Benedict, named for its creator,
Benedict of Nursia. From the start of his reign, his coinage imitated his father Charlemagne's portrait, which gave it an image of imperial authority and prestige. As a result, most French kings were crowned in Reims, following the custom established by Louis the Pious.
Ordinatio imperii On 9 April 817,
Maundy Thursday, Louis and his court were crossing a wooden gallery from the cathedral to the palace in Aachen, when the gallery collapsed, killing many. Louis, having barely survived and realizing death was imminent, began planning for his succession. Three months later among the approval of his Aachen court and the clergy he issued an imperial decree of eighteen chapters, the
Ordinatio Imperii, that laid out plans for an orderly dynastic succession. The term
Ordinatio Imperii is a modern (19th-century) creation. The decree is called
divisio imperii in the only surviving contemporary manuscript. The fate of his nephew deeply marked Louis's conscience for the rest of his life. In 833, as a deeply religious man, Louis performed
penance for causing Bernard's death, at his palace of
Attigny near Vouziers in the
Ardennes, before
Pope Paschal I, and a council of clerics and nobles of the realm that had been convened for the reconciliation of Louis with his three younger half-brothers,
Hugo whom he soon made abbot of St-Quentin,
Drogo whom he soon made
Bishop of Metz, and Theodoric. This act of contrition, partly in emulation of
Theodosius I, had the effect of greatly reducing his prestige as a Frankish ruler, for he also recited a list of minor offences about which no secular ruler of the time would have taken any notice. He also made the egregious error of releasing Wala and Adalard from their monastic confinements, placing the former in a position of power in the court of Lothair and the latter in a position in his own house. On the far southern edge of his great realm, Louis had to control the Lombard
princes of Benevento whom Charlemagne had never subjugated. He extracted promises from Princes
Grimoald IV and
Sico, but to no effect. On the southwestern frontier, problems commenced early when c. 812, Louis the Pious crossed the western Pyrenees 'to settle matters' in Pamplona. The expedition made its way back north, where it narrowly escaped an ambush attempt arranged by the
Basques in the pass of Roncevaux thanks to the precautions he took, i.e. hostages.
Séguin, duke of
Gascony, was then deposed by Louis in 816, possibly for failing to suppress or collaborating with the Basque revolt south of the western Pyrenees, so sparking off a Basque uprising that was duly put down by the Frankish emperor in Dax. Seguin was replaced by
Lupus III, who was dispossessed in 818 by the emperor. In 820 an assembly at
Quierzy-sur-Oise decided to send an expedition against the Cordoban caliphate (827). The counts in charge of the army,
Hugh, count of
Tours, and
Matfrid, count of
Orléans, were slow in acting and the expedition came to naught.
First civil war as depicted in the
Vivian Bible, c. 845 In 818, as Louis was returning from a campaign to
Brittany, he was greeted by news of the death of his wife,
Ermengarde. Ermengarde was the daughter of
Ingerman, the duke of Hesbaye. Louis had been close to his wife, who had been involved in policymaking. It was rumoured that she had played a part in her nephew's death and Louis himself believed her own death was divine retribution for that event. It took many months for his courtiers and advisors to convince him to remarry, but eventually he did, in 820, to
Judith, daughter of
Welf, count of
Altdorf. In 823 Judith gave birth to a son, who was named
Charles. The birth of this son damaged the
Partition of Aachen, as Louis's attempts to provide for his fourth son met with stiff resistance from his older sons, and the last two decades of his reign were marked by civil war. At
Worms in 829, Louis gave
Alemannia to Charles, with the title of king or duke (historians differ on this), thus enraging his son and co-emperor Lothair, whose promised share was thereby diminished. An insurrection was soon at hand. With the urging of the vengeful Wala and the cooperation of his brothers, Lothair accused Judith of having committed adultery with
Bernard of Septimania, even suggesting Bernard to be the true father of Charles. Ebbo and Hildwin abandoned the emperor at that point, Bernard having risen to greater heights than either of them.
Agobard,
Archbishop of Lyon, and
Jesse,
bishop of Amiens, too, opposed the redivision of the empire and lent their episcopal prestige to the rebels. In 830, at Wala's insistence that Bernard of Septimania was plotting against him, Pepin of Aquitaine led an army of
Gascons, with the support of the Neustrian magnates, all the way to Paris. At
Verberie, Louis the German joined him. At that time, the emperor returned from another campaign in Brittany to find his empire at war with itself. He marched as far as
Compiègne, an ancient royal town, before being surrounded by Pepin's forces and captured. Judith was incarcerated at Poitiers and Bernard fled to Barcelona. '', essentially Roman in design On 13 November 833,
Ebbo, with
Agobard of Lyon, presided over a synod at the Church of Saint Medard in Soissons which saw Louis undertake public
penance for the second time in his reign. The penitential ritual that was undertaken began when Louis arrived at the church and confessed multiple times to the crimes levied against him. The crimes had been historic and recent, with accusations of oath breaking, violation of the public peace and inability to control his adulterous wife,
Judith of Bavaria. Afterwards, he threw his sword belt at the base of the altar and received judgement through the imposition of the hands of the bishops. Louis was to live the rest of his life as a penitent, never to hold office again. The penance divided the aristocracy. The anonymous biographer of the
Vita Hludovici criticized the whole affair on the basis that God does not judge twice for sins committed and confessed. Lothair's allies were generously compensated. Ebbo himself received the monastery of
St Vaast whilst
Pepin was allowed to keep the lands reclaimed from his father. Men like
Rabanus Maurus, Louis's younger half-brothers Drogo and Hugh, and Emma, Judith's sister and Louis the German's new wife, worked on the younger Louis to make peace with his father, for the sake of unity of the empire. The humiliation to which Louis was then subjected at Notre Dame in Compiègne turned the loyal barons of Austrasia and
Saxony against Lothair, and the usurper fled to
Burgundy, skirmishing with loyalists near
Chalon-sur-Saône. Louis was restored the next year, on 1 March 834. On Lothair's return to Italy, Wala, Jesse and Matfrid, formerly count of Orléans, died of a pestilence. On 2 February 835 at the palace
Thionville, Louis presided over a general council to deal with the events of the previous year. Known as the
Synod of Thionville, Louis himself was reinvested with his ancestral garb and the crown, symbols of
Carolingian rulership. Furthermore, the penance of 833 was officially reversed and Archbishop
Ebbo officially resigned after confessing to a capital crime, whilst
Agobard of Lyon and Bartholmew, Archbishop of Narbonne were also deposed. Later that year Lothair fell ill; once again the events turned in Louis favour. In 836, however, the family made peace and Louis restored Pepin and Louis, deprived Lothair of all save Italy, and gave it to Charles in a new division, given at the diet of
Crémieu. At about that time, the
Vikings terrorized and sacked
Utrecht and
Antwerp. In 837, they went up the
Rhine as far as Nijmegen, and their king,
Rorik, demanded the
weregild of some of his followers killed on previous expeditions before Louis the Pious mustered a massive force and marched against them. They fled, but it would not be the last time they harried the northern coasts. In 838, they even claimed sovereignty over
Frisia, but a treaty was confirmed between them and the Franks in 839. Louis the Pious ordered the construction of a North Sea fleet and the sending of
missi dominici into Frisia to establish Frankish sovereignty there.
Third civil war In 837, Louis crowned Charles king over all of Alemannia and Burgundy and gave him a portion of his brother Louis's land. Louis the German promptly rose in revolt, and the emperor redivided his realm again at
Quierzy-sur-Oise, giving all of the young king of Bavaria's lands, save Bavaria itself, to Charles. Emperor Louis did not stop there, however. His devotion to Charles knew no bounds. When Pepin died in 838, Louis declared Charles the new king of Aquitaine. The nobles, however, elected Pepin's son
Pepin II. When Louis threatened invasion, the third great civil war of his reign broke out. In the spring of 839, Louis the German invaded Swabia, Pepin II and his Gascon subjects fought all the way to the
Loire, and the Danes returned to ravage the
Frisian coast (sacking
Dorestad for a second time). Lothair, for the first time in a long time, allied with his father and pledged support at Worms in exchange for a redivision of the inheritance. At a final
placitum held at Worms on 20 May, Louis gave Bavaria to Louis the German and disinherited Pepin II, leaving the entire remainder of the empire to be divided roughly into an eastern part and a western. Lothair was given the choice of which partition he would inherit and he chose the eastern, including Italy, leaving the western for Charles. The emperor quickly subjugated Aquitaine and had Charles recognised by the nobles and clergy at
Clermont-en-Auvergne in 840. Louis then, in a final flash of glory, rushed into Bavaria and forced the younger Louis into the
Ostmark. The empire now settled as he had declared it at Worms, he returned in July to
Frankfurt am Main, where he disbanded the army. The final civil war of his reign was over. ==Death==