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Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Lord Chamberlain" to "Luqman", Volume 17, Slice 1

VOLUME XVI SLICE I L to Lamellibranchia (continued 4)

Reading edition

See Victoria County History, Leicestershire; W. G. D. Fletcher, Chapters in the History of Loughborough (1883); Sir Thomas Pochin, “Historical Description of Loughborough” (1770) (vol. viii. of Bibliotheca topographica Britannica).

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LOUGHREA, a market town of Co. Galway, Ireland, pleasantly situated on the N. shore of Lough Rea, 116 m. W. from Dublin by a branch from Attymon Junction on the Midland Great Western railway. Pop. (1901), 2815. There are slight remains of an Early English Carmelite friary dating c. 1300, which escaped the Dissolution. Loughrea is the seat of the Roman Catholic bishop of Clonfert, and has a cathedral built in 1900-1905. A part of the castle of Richard de Burgh, the founder of the friary, still survives, and there are traces of the town fortifications. In the neighbourhood are a cromlech and two ruined towers, and crannogs, or ancient stockaded islands, have been discovered in the lough. Apart from the surroundings of the lough, the neighbouring country is peculiarly desolate.

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LOUGHTON, an urban district in the Epping parliamentary division of Essex, England, 11½ m. N.N.E. of Liverpool Street station, London, by the Great Eastern railway. Pop. (1901), 4730. This is one of the villages which has become the centre of a residential district, and is frequented by holiday-makers from London, owing to its proximity to the pleasant woodland scenery of Epping Forest. It lies on the eastern outskirts of the Forest, near the river Roding. There are several modern churches. The lordship of the manor was granted to Waltham Abbey. In the vicinity are large earthworks, probably of British origin, known as Loughton Camp.

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LOUHANS, a town of east-central France in the old province of Franche-Comté, now capital of an arrondissement in the department of Saône-et-Loire, 34 m. N.N.E. of Mâcon by road. Pop. (1906), 3216. Its church has a fine tower of the 15th century, of which the balustrade is carved so as to form the first words of the Ave Maria. There are also a hospital of the 17th century with a collection of ancient earthenware, a town-hall of the 18th century and remains of ramparts of the 16th and 17th century. The town is the central market of the agricultural plain of Bresse; chickens form the chief article of commerce. There is also a large felt-hat manufactory.

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LOUIS, or Lewis (from the Frankish Chlodowîch, Chlodwig, Latinized as Chlodowius, Lodhuwicus, Lodhuvicus, whence—in the Strassburg oath of 842—O. Fr. Lodhuwigs, then Chlovis, Loys and later Louis, whence Span. Luiz and—through the Angevin kings—Hungarian Lájos; cf. Ger. Ludwig or Ludewig, from O. H. Ger. Hluduwîc, Hludwîg, Ludhuwîg, M. H. Ger. Ludewîc; Ital. Lodovico), a masculine proper name, meaning “Fame-fight” or “Famous in fight,” from old Frankish chlud, chlod (O. H. Ger. hlud, hlod), “fame,” and wîch (O. H. Ger. wîc., wîg, A.S. wîg) “war,” “battle” (cf. Gr. Κλυτόμαχος). The name has been borne by numerous European sovereigns and others, of whom some are noticed below in the following order: (1) Roman emperors and Frankish and German kings, (2) kings of Bavaria, (3) kings of France, (4) kings of Hungary, (5) kings of Naples, (6) Louis of Nassau. (Louis Philippe, king of the French, is dealt with separately.)

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LOUIS I. (778-840), surnamed the “Pious,” Roman emperor, third son of the emperor Charlemagne and his wife Hildegarde, was born at Chasseneuil in central France, and crowned king of Aquitaine in 781. He received a good education; but as his tastes were ecclesiastical rather than military, the government of his kingdom was mainly conducted by his counsellors. Louis, however, gained sound experience in warfare in the defence of Aquitaine, shared in campaigns against the Saxons and the Avars, and led an army to Italy in 792. In 794 or 795 he married Irmengarde, daughter of Ingram, count of Haspen. After the deaths of his two elder brothers, Louis, at his father’s command, crowned himself co-emperor at Aix-la-Chapelle on the 11th of September 813, and was formally associated in the government of the Empire, of which he became sole ruler, in the following January. He earned the surname of “Pious” by banishing his sisters and others of immoral life from court; by attempting to reform and purify monastic life; and by showing great liberality to the church. In October 816 he was crowned emperor at Reims by Pope Stephen IV.; and at Aix in July 817, he arranged for a division of his Empire among his sons. This was followed by a revolt of his nephew, Bernard, king of Italy; but the rising was easily suppressed, and Bernard was mutilated and killed. The emperor soon began to repent of this cruelty, and when his remorse had been accentuated by the death of his wife in 818, he pardoned the followers of Bernard and restored their estates, and in 822 did public penance at Attigny. In 819 he married Judith, daughter of Welf I., count of Bavaria, who in 823 bore him a son Charles, afterwards called the Bald. Judith made unceasing efforts to secure a kingdom for her child; and with the support of her eldest step-son Lothair, a district was carved out for Charles in 829. Discontent at this arrangement increased to the point of rebellion, which broke out the following year, provoked by Judith’s intrigues with Bernard, count of Barcelona, whom she had installed as her favourite at court. Lothair and his brother Pippin joined the rebels, and after Judith had been sent into a convent and Bernard had fled to Spain, an assembly was held at Compiègne, when Louis was practically deposed and Lothair became the real ruler of the Empire. Sympathy was, however, soon aroused for the emperor, who was treated as a prisoner, and a second assembly was held at Nimwegen in October 830 when, with the concurrence of his sons Pippin and Louis, he was restored to power and Judith returned to court.

Further trouble between Pippin and his father led to the nominal transfer of Aquitaine from Pippin to his brother Charles in 831. The emperor’s plans for a division of his dominions then led to a revolt of his three sons. Louis met them in June 833 near Kolmar, but owing possibly to the influence of Pope Gregory IV., who took part in the negotiations, he found himself deserted by his supporters, and the treachery and falsehood which marked the proceedings gave to the place the name of Lügenfeld, or the “field of lies.” Judith, charged with infidelity, was again banished; Louis was sent into the monastery of St Medard at Soissons; and the government of the Empire was assumed by his sons. The emperor was forced to confess his sins, and declare himself unworthy of the throne, but Lothair did not succeed in his efforts to make his father a monk. Sympathy was again felt for Louis, and when the younger Louis had failed to induce Lothair to treat the emperor in a more becoming fashion, he and Pippin took up arms on behalf of their father. The result was that in March 834 Louis was restored to power at St Denis; Judith once more returned to his side and the kingdoms of Louis and Pippin were increased. The struggle with Lothair continued until the autumn, when he submitted to the emperor and was confined to Italy. To make the restoration more complete, a great assembly at Diedenhofen declared the deposition of Louis to have been contrary to law, and a few days later he was publicly restored in the cathedral of Metz. In December 838 Pippin died, and a new arrangement was made by which the Empire, except Bavaria, the kingdom of Louis, was divided between Lothair, now reconciled to his father, and Charles. The emperor was returning from suppressing a revolt on the part of his son Louis, provoked by this disposition, when he died on the 20th of June 840 on an island in the Rhine near Ingelheim. He was buried in the church of St Arnulf at Metz. Louis was a man of strong frame, who loved the chase, and did not shrink from the hardships of war. He was, however, easily influenced and was unequal to the government of the Empire bequeathed to him by his father. No sustained effort was made to ward off the inroads of the Danes and others, who were constantly attacking the borders of the Empire. Louis, who is also called Le Débonnaire, counts as Louis I., king of France.

See Annales Fuldenses; Annales Bertiniani; Thegan, Vita Hludowici; the Vita Hludowici attributed to Astronomus; Ermoldus Nigellus, In honorem Hludowici imperatoris; Nithard, Historiarum libri, all in the Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores, Bände i. and ii. (Hanover and Berlin, 1826 fol.); E. Mühlbacher, Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter den Karolingern (Innsbruck, 1881); and Deutsche Geschichte unter den Karolingern (Stuttgart, 1886); B. Simson, Jahrbücher des fränkischen Reichs unter Ludwig dem Frommen (Leipzig, 1874-1876); and E. Dümmler, Geschichte des ostfränkischen Reiches (Leipzig, 1887-1888).

(A. W. H.*)

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LOUIS II. (825-875), Roman emperor, eldest son of the emperor Lothair I., was designated king of Italy in 839, and taking up his residence in that country was crowned king at Rome by Pope Sergius II. on the 15th of June 844. He at once preferred a claim to the rights of an emperor in the city, which was decisively rejected; but in 850 he was crowned joint emperor at Rome by Pope Leo IV., and soon afterwards married his cousin, Engelberga, a daughter of King Louis the German, and undertook the independent government of Italy. He took the field against the Saracens; quashed some accusations against Pope Leo; held a diet at Pavia; and on the death of his father in September 855 became sole emperor. The division of Lothair’s dominions, by which he obtained no territory outside Italy, aroused his discontent, and in 857 he allied himself with Louis the German against his brother Lothair, king of Lorraine, and King Charles the Bald. But after Louis had secured the election of Nicholas I. as pope in 858, he became reconciled with his brother, and received some lands south of the Jura in return for assistance given to Lothair in his efforts to obtain a divorce from his wife, Teutberga. In 863, on the death of his brother Charles, Louis received the kingdom of Provence, and in 864 came into collision with Pope Nicholas I. over his brother’s divorce. The archbishops, who had been deposed by Nicholas for proclaiming this marriage invalid, obtained the support of the emperor, who reached Rome with an army in February 864; but, having been seized with fever, he made peace with the pope and left the city. In his efforts to restore order in Italy, Louis met with considerable success both against the turbulent princes of the peninsula and against the Saracens who were ravaging southern Italy. In 866 he routed these invaders, but could not follow up his successes owing to the want of a fleet. So in 869 he made an alliance with the eastern emperor, Basil I., who sent him some ships to assist in the capture of Bari, the headquarters of the Saracens, which succumbed in 871. Meanwhile his brother Lothair had died in 869, and owing to his detention in southern Italy he was unable to prevent the partition of Lorraine between Louis the German and Charles the Bald. Some jealousy between Louis and Basil followed the victory at Bari, and in reply to an insult from the eastern emperor Louis attempted to justify his right to the title “emperor of the Romans.” He had withdrawn into Benevento to prepare for a further campaign, when he was treacherously attacked in his palace, robbed and imprisoned by Adelchis, prince of Benevento, in August 871. The landing of fresh bands of Saracens compelled Adelchis to release his prisoner a month later, and Louis was forced to swear he would take no revenge for this injury, nor ever enter Benevento with an army. Returning to Rome, he was released from his oath, and was crowned a second time as emperor by Pope Adrian II. on the 18th of May 872. He won further successes against the Saracens, who were driven from Capua, but the attempts of the emperor to punish Adelchis were not very successful. Returning to northern Italy, he died, somewhere in the province of Brescia, on the 12th of August 875, and was buried in the church of St Ambrose at Milan, having named as his successor in Italy his cousin Carloman, son of Louis the German. Louis was an excellent ruler, of whom it was said “in his time there was great peace, because every one could enjoy his own possessions.”

See Annales Bertiniani, Chronica S. Benedicti Casinensis, both in the Monumenta Germaniae historica, Scriptores, Bände i. and iii. (Hanover and Berlin, 1826 fol.); E. Mühlbacher, Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter den Karolingern (Innsbruck, 1881); Th. Sickel, Acta regum et imperatorum Karolinorum, digesta et enarrata (Vienna, 1867-1868); and E. Dümmler, Geschichte des ostfränkischen Reiches (Leipzig, 1887-1888).

(A. W. H.*)

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LOUIS III. (c. 880-928), surnamed the “Blind,” Roman emperor, was a son of Boso, king of Provence or Lower Burgundy, and Irmengarde, daughter of the emperor Louis II. The emperor Charles the Fat took Louis under his protection on the death of Boso in 887; but Provence was in a state of wild disorder, and it was not until 890, when Irmengarde had secured the support of the Bavarian king Arnulf and of Pope Stephen V., that Louis was recognized as king. In 900, after the death of the emperor Arnulf, he went to Italy to obtain the imperial crown. He was chosen king of the Lombards at Pavia, and crowned emperor at Rome in February 901 by Pope Benedict IV. He gained a temporary authority in northern Italy, but was soon compelled by his rival Berengar, margrave of Friuli, to leave the country and to swear he would never return. In spite of his oath he went again to Italy in 904, where he secured the submission of Lombardy; but on the 21st of July 905 he was surprised at Verona by Berengar, who deprived him of his sight and sent him back to Provence, where he passed his days in enforced inactivity until his death in September 928. He married Adelaide, possibly a daughter of Rudolph I., king of Upper Burgundy. His eldest son, Charles Constantine, succeeded to no more than the county of Vienne.

See Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, Bände ix. and x. (Göttingen, 1862-1886); E. Dümmler, Geschichte des ostfränkischen Reichs (Leipzig, 1887-1888); and Gesta Berengarii imperatoris (Halle, 1871); and F. de Gingins-la-Sarra. Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Provence et de Bourgogne Jurane (Zürich, 1851).

(A. W. H.*)

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LOUIS IV., or V. (c. 1287-1347), surnamed the Bavarian, Roman emperor and duke of Upper Bavaria, was the second son of Louis II., duke of Upper Bavaria and count palatine of the Rhine, and Matilda, daughter of the German king Rudolph I. Having lost his father in 1294 he inherited, jointly with his elder brother Rudolph, Upper Bavaria and the Palatinate, but passed his time mainly at the court of the Habsburgs in Vienna, while his early experiences of warfare were gained in the campaigns of his uncle, the German king Albert I. He was soon at variance with his brother over their joint possessions. Albert taking the part of Louis in this quarrel, Rudolph promised in 1301 to admit his brother to a share in the government of Bavaria and the Palatinate. When Albert was murdered in May 1308, Louis became a candidate for the German throne; but his claim was not strongly supported. The new king, Henry VII., was very friendly with Rudolph, and as the promise of 1301 had not been carried out, Louis demanded a partition of their lands. Upper Bavaria was accordingly divided in 1310, and Louis received the north-western part of the duchy; but Rudolph refused to surrender any part of the Palatinate. In 1310, on the death of Stephen I., duke of Lower Bavaria, Louis undertook the guardianship of his two young sons. This led to a war between the brothers, which lasted till June 1313, when peace was made at Munich. Many of the nobles in Lower Bavaria, however, angered at Louis, called in the aid of Frederick I. (the Fair), duke of Austria; but he was defeated at Gammelsdorf on the 9th of November 1313, a victory which not only led to peace, but conferred considerable renown on Louis.

In August 1313 the German throne had again become vacant, and Louis was chosen at Frankfort on the 20th of October 1314 by a majority of the electors, and his coronation followed at Aix-la-Chapelle on the 25th of November. A minority of princes had, however, supported Frederick of Austria; and a war followed between the rivals, during which Louis was supported by the cities and the districts of the middle and lower Rhine. His embarrassments were complicated by a renewal of the dispute with his brother; but when this had been disposed of in 1317 by Rudolph’s renunciation of his claims on upper Bavaria and the Palatinate in consideration of a yearly subsidy, Louis was able to give undivided attention to the war with Frederick, and obtained several fresh allies. On the 28th of September 1322 a battle was fought at Mühldorf, which ended in a complete victory for Louis, owing mainly to the timely aid of Frederick IV. of Hohenzollern, burgrave of Nüremburg. Frederick of Austria was taken prisoner, but the struggle was continued by his brother Leopold until the latter’s death in 1326. Attempts to enable the two kings to rule Germany jointly failed, and about 1326 Frederick returned to Austria, leaving Louis in undisputed possession of the country. Before this conclusion, however, a new enemy had taken the field. Supported by Philip V. of France in his desire to free Italy entirely from German influence, Pope John XXII. refused to recognize either Frederick or Louis, and asserted his own right to administer the empire during a vacancy. After the battle of Mühldorf Louis sent Berthold of Neifen, count of Marstetten, into Italy with an army, which soon compelled the papal troops to raise the siege at Milan. The pope threatened Louis with excommunication unless he resigned his kingdom within three months. The king thereupon appealed to a general council, and was placed under the papal ban on the 23rd of March 1324, a sentence which he answered by publishing his charges against the pope. In the contest Louis was helped by the Minorites, who were upholding against John the principal of clerical poverty, and by the writings of Marsilius of Padua (who dedicated to Louis his Defensor pacis), William of Occam, John of Jandun and others. Taking the offensive, Louis met his Ghibelline supporters at Trent and reached Italy in March 1327; and in May he received the Lombard crown at Milan. Although the pope renewed his fulminations Louis compelled Pisa to surrender, and was hailed with great rejoicing in Rome. On the 17th of January 1328 he was crowned emperor in St Peter’s by Sciarra Colonna, a Roman noble; and he answered the continued attacks of Pope John by pronouncing his deposition, and proclaiming Peter of Corvara pope as Nicholas V. He then undertook an expedition against John’s ally, Robert, king of Naples, but, disunion among his troops and scarcity of money and provisions, drove him again to Rome, where, finding that his exactions had diminished his popularity, he left the city, and after passing six months at Pisa, returned to Germany in January 1330. The struggle with the pope was renewed in Germany, and when a formidable league had been formed against Louis, his thoughts turned to a reconciliation. He was prepared to assent to very humiliating terms, and even agreed to abdicate; but the negotiations, which were prolonged by further demands on the part of the pope, were interrupted by his death in December 1334. John’s successor, Benedict XII., seemed more anxious to come to an arrangement, but was prevented from doing so by the influence of Philip VI. of France. Overtures for peace were made to Philip, but without success; and in July 1337 Louis concluded an alliance with Edward III., king of England, and made active preparations for war. During these years his attention was also occupied by a quarrel with John, king of Bohemia, over the possession of Tirol, by a campaign in Lower Bavaria, and a futile expedition against Nicholas I., bishop of Constance. But although his position was shaken by the indifferent success which attended these campaigns, it was improved when the electors meeting at Rense in July 1338 banded themselves together to defend their elective rights, and when the diet at Frankfort confirmed a decree which declared that the German king did not need the papal approbation to make his election valid.

Louis devoted considerable thought and time to extending the possessions of the Wittelsbach family, to which he belonged. Tirol had for some time been a subject of contention between the emperor and other princes. The heiress of this county, Margaret Maultasch, had married John Henry, margrave of Moravia, son of King John of Bohemia. Having quarrelled with her husband, Margaret fled to the protection of Louis, who seized the opportunity to declare her marriage void and to unite her in 1342 with his son Louis. The emperor also increased his possessions by his own marriage. In 1322 his first wife, Beatrice, daughter of Henry III., count of Glogau, had died after thirteen years of married life, and Louis then married Margaret, daughter of William III., count of Holland. When her brother, count William IV., died childless in 1345, the emperor obtained possession of Holland, Zealand and Friesland. In 1341 he recovered a portion of the Palatinate, and soon deserted Edward of England and came to terms with Philip of France. The acquisition of the territories, and especially of Tirol, had provided Louis with many enemies, prominent among whom were John of Bohemia and his family, that of Luxemburg. John, therefore, entered into an alliance with Pope Clement VI. The course of the war which ensued in Germany was such as to compel the emperor to submit to humiliating terms, though he stopped short of accepting the election of Charles, margrave of Moravia (afterwards the emperor Charles IV.) as German king in July 1346. Charles consequently attacked Tirol; but Louis, who appeared to have considerable chances of success, died suddenly at a bear-hunt near Munich on the 11th of October 1347. He was buried in the Frauenkirche at Munich, where a statue was erected to his memory in 1622 by Maximilian I., elector of Bavaria, and where a second was unveiled in 1905. He had seven sons, three of whom were subsequently electors of Brandenburg, and ten daughters.

Various estimates have been formed of the character of Louis. As a soldier he possessed skill as well as bravery, but he lacked perseverance and decision in his political relations. At one time haughtily defying the pope, at another abjectly craving his pardon, he seems a very inglorious figure; and the fact that he remained almost undisturbed in the possession of Germany in spite of the utmost efforts of the popes, is due rather to the political and intellectual tendencies of the time than to his own good qualities. Nevertheless he ruled Bavaria with considerable success. He befriended the towns, encouraged trade and commerce and gave a new system of laws to the duchy. German took the place of Latin in the imperial charters, and although not a scholar, the emperor was a patron of learning. Louis was a man of graceful appearance, with ruddy countenance and prominent nose.

Bibliography.—Many of the authorities for the life and reign of Louis are found in the Fontes rerum Germanicarum, Bände i. and iv., edited by J. F. Böhmer (Stuttgart, 1843-1868). Among these is the Vita Ludovici IV., by an unknown author. A number of important documents are found in the Regesta imperii 1314-1347, edited by J. F. Böhmer and J. Ficker (Innsbruck, 1865); Acta imperii selecta, edited by J. F. Böhmer and J. Ficker (Innsbruck, 1870); Urkunden zur Geschichte des Römerzuges Königs Ludwigs des Bayern, edited by J. Ficker (Innsbruck, 1865); Urkundliche Beiträge zur Geschichte Kaisers Ludwigs IV., edited by C. Höfler (Munich, 1839); Vatikanische Urkunden zur Geschichte Kaisers Ludwigs des Bayern, Bände v. and vi. (Stuttgart, 1877-1888); Vatikanische Akten zur Deutschen Geschichte in der Zeit Kaisers Ludwigs des Bayern, edited by S. Riezler (Innsbruck, 1891). In the Forschungen zur Deutschen Geschichte (Göttingen, 1862-1886), Band xx., is found Urkunden zur Bairischen und Deutschen Geschichte 1256-1343, edited by S. Riezler; and in Band xiii. is C. Häutle’s Beiträge zum Itinerar Kaiser Ludwigs.

The following may also be consulted: C. Gewoldus, Defensio Ludovici IV. contra A. Bzovium (Ingolstadt, 1618); J. G. Herwartus, Ludovicus IV. imperator defensus (Mainz, 1618); N. Burgundus, Historia Bavarica sive Ludovicus IV. imperator (Ingolstadt, 1636). The best modern authorities are F. von Weech, Kaiser Ludwig der Bayer und König Johann von Böhmen (Munich, 1860); S. Riezler, Die literarischen Widersacher der Päpste zur Zeit Ludwigs des Bayern (Leipzig, 1874); C. Mühling, Die Geschichte der Doppelwahl des Jahres 1314 (Munich, 1882); R. Döbner, Die Auseinandersetzung zwischen Ludwig IV. dem Bayern und Friedrich dem Schönen von Oesterreich (Göttingen, 1875); W. Altmann, Der Römerzug Ludwigs des Bayern (Berlin, 1886); A. Chroust, Beiträge zur Geschichte Ludwigs des Bayern und seiner Zeit (Gotha, 1877); K. Müller, Der Kampf Ludwigs des Bayern mit der römischen Curie (Tübingen, 1879-1880); W. Preger, Der Kirchenpolitische Kampf unter Ludwig dem Bayern (Munich, 1877); Sievers, Die politischen Beziehungen Kaiser Ludwigs des Bayern zu Frankreich (Berlin, 1896); Steinberger, Kaiser Ludwig der Bayer (Münich, 1901); and Ueding, Ludwig der Bayer und die niederrheinischen Städte (Paderborn, 1904).

(A. W. H.*)

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LOUIS (804-876) surnamed the “German,” king of the East Franks, was the third son of the emperor Louis I. and his wife Irmengarde. His early years were partly spent at the court of his grandfather Charlemagne, whose special affection he is said to have won. When the emperor Louis divided his dominions between his sons in 817, Louis received Bavaria and the neighbouring lands, but did not undertake the government until 825, when he became involved in war with the Slavonic tribes on his eastern frontier. In 827 he married Emma, daughter of Welf I., count of Bavaria, and sister of his stepmother Judith; and he soon began to interfere in the quarrels arising from Judith’s efforts to secure a kingdom for her own son Charles, and the consequent struggles of Louis and his brothers with the emperor Louis I. (q.v.). When the elder Louis died in 840 and his eldest son Lothair claimed the whole Empire, Louis in alliance with his half-brother, king Charles the Bald, defeated Lothair at Fontenoy on the 25th of June 841. In June 842 the three brothers met on an island in the Sâone to negotiate a peace, and each appointed forty representatives to arrange the boundaries of their respective kingdoms. This developed into the treaty of Verdun concluded in August 843, by which Louis received the bulk of the lands of the Carolingian empire lying east of the Rhine, together with a district around Spires, Worms and Mainz, on the left bank of the river. His territories included Bavaria, where he made Regensburg the centre of his government, Thuringia, Franconia and Saxony. He may truly be called the founder of the German kingdom, though his attempts to maintain the unity of the Empire proved futile. Having in 842 crushed a rising in Saxony, he compelled the Abotrites to own his authority, and undertook campaigns against the Bohemians, the Moravians and other tribes, but was not very successful in freeing his shores from the ravages of Danish pirates. At his instance synods and assemblies were held where laws were decreed for the better government of church and state. In 853 and the following years Louis made more than one attempt to secure the throne of Aquitaine, which the people of that country offered him in their disgust with the cruel misrule of Charles the Bald. But though he met with sufficient success to encourage him to issue a charter in 858, dated “the first year of the reign in West Francia,” treachery and desertion in his army, and the loyalty to Charles of the Aquitanian bishops brought about the failure of the enterprise, which Louis renounced by a treaty signed at Coblenz on the 7th of June 860.

In 855 the emperor Lothair died, and was succeeded in Italy by his eldest son Louis II., and in the northern part of his kingdom by his second son, Lothair. The comparative weakness of these kingdoms, together with the disorder caused by the matrimonial troubles of Lothair, afforded a suitable opening for the intrigues of Louis and Charles the Bald, whose interest was increased by the fact that both their nephews were without male issue. Louis supported Lothair in his efforts to divorce his wife Teutberga, for which he received a promise of Alsace, while Charles opposed the divorce. But in 865 Louis and Charles meeting near Toul, renewed the peace of Coblenz, and doubtless discussed the possibility of dividing Lothair’s kingdom. In 868 at Metz they agreed definitely to a partition; but when Lothair died in 869, Louis was lying seriously ill, and his armies were engaged with the Moravians. Charles the Bald accordingly seized the whole kingdom; but Louis, having recovered, compelled him by a threat of war to agree to the treaty of Mersen, which divided it between the claimants. The later years of Louis were troubled by risings on the part of his sons, the eldest of whom, Carloman, revolted in 861 and again two years later; an example that was followed by the second son Louis, who in a further rising was joined by his brother Charles. A report that the emperor Louis II. was dead led to peace between father and sons. The emperor, however, was not dead, but a prisoner; and as he was not only the nephew, but also the son-in-law of Louis, that monarch hoped to secure both the imperial dignity and the Italian kingdom for his son Carloman. Meeting his daughter Engelberga, the wife of Louis II., at Trent in 872, Louis made an alliance with her against Charles the Bald, and in 874 visited Italy doubtless on the same errand. The emperor, having named Carloman as his successor, died in August 875, but Charles the Bald reached Italy before his rival, and by persuading Carloman, when he did cross the Alps, to return, secured the imperial crown. Louis was preparing for war when he died on the 28th of September 876 at Frankfort, and was buried at Lorsch, leaving three sons and three daughters. Louis was in war and peace alike, the most competent of the descendants of Charlemagne. He obtained for his kingdom a certain degree of security in face of the attacks of Normans, Hungarians, Moravians and others. He lived in close alliance with the Church, to which he was very generous, and entered eagerly into schemes for the conversion of his heathen neighbours.

See Annales Fuldenses; Annales Bertiniani; Nithard, Historiarum Libri, all in the Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores, Bände i. and ii. (Hanover and Berlin, 1826 seq.); E. Dümmler, Geschichte des ostfränkischen Reiches (Leipzig, 1887-1888); Th. Sickel, Die Urkunden Ludwigs des Deutschen (Vienna, 1861-1862); E. Mühlbacher, Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter den Karolingern (Innsbruck, 1881); and A. Krohn, Ludwig der Deutsche (Saarbrücken, 1872).

(A. W. H.*)

Illustration from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Lord Chamberlain" to "Luqman" Volume 17, Slice 1

LOUIS I., king of Bavaria (1786-1868), son of the then prince, afterwards duke and elector, Max Joseph of Zweibrücken and his wife Princess Augusta of Hesse-Darmstadt ( -1796), was born at Strassburg on the 25th of August 1786. He received a careful education at home, afterwards (in 1803) going to the Bavarian national university of Landshut and to Göttingen. As a young man he was drawn into the Romantic movement then at its height; but both the classics and contemporary classical poetry took hold upon his receptive mind (he visited Goethe in 1827). He had himself strong artistic tendencies, though his numerous poems show but little proof of this, and as a patron of the arts he proved himself as great as any who had ever occupied a German, throne, and more than a mere dilettante. His first visit to Italy, in 1804, had an important influence upon this side of his development.

But even in Italy the crown prince (his father had become elector in 1799 and king of Bavaria in 1805) did not forget his nationality. He soon made himself leader of the small anti-French party in Bavaria. Napoleon sought in vain to win him over, and Louis fell more and more out of favour with him. Napoleon was even reported to have said: “Qui m’empêche de laisser fusiller ce prince?” Their relations continued to be strained, although in the campaigns of 1807 and 1809, in which Bavaria was among the allies of France, Louis won his laurels in the field.

The crown prince was also averse from a Napoleonic marriage, and preferred to marry (October 12, 1810) the Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen (1792-1854). Three daughters and four sons were born of this marriage, one of whom succeeded him as Maximilian II., while another, Luitpold, became prince regent of Bavaria on the death of Louis II.

During the time that he was crown prince Louis resided chiefly at Innsbruck or Salzburg as governor of the circle of the Inn and Salzach. In 1815 he attended the Congress of Vienna, where he was especially occupied in endeavouring to obtain the restoration of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany; and later in the year he was with the allies in Paris, using his influence to secure the return of the art treasures carried off by the French.

After 1815 also the crown prince maintained his anti-French attitude, and it was mainly his influence that in 1817 secured the fall of Montgelas, the minister with French sympathies. Opposed to absolutism, Louis took great interest in the work of organizing the Bavarian constitution (1818) and defended it against Metternich and the Carlsbad Decrees (1819); he was also one of the most zealous of the ardent Philhellenes in Germany at the time. He succeeded to the crown of Bavaria on the 12th of October 1825, and at once embarked upon a moderate constitutional policy, in which he found himself in general agreement with the parliament. Although he displayed a loyal attachment to the Catholic Church, especially owing to his artistic sympathies, he none the less opposed all its more exaggerated pretensions, especially as represented by the Jesuits, whom he condemned as un-German. In the year of his accession he abolished an old edict concerning the censorship. He also furthered in many ways the internal administration of the state, and especially that of the finances. His personal tastes, apart from his activities as a Maecenas, being economical, he endeavoured also to limit public expenditure, in a way which was not always a benefit to the country. Bavaria’s power of self-defence especially was weakened by his economies and by his lack of interest in the military aspect of things.

He was a warm friend of learning, and in 1826 transferred the university of Landshut to Munich, where he placed it under his special protection. Prominent scholars were summoned to it, mostly belonging to the Romantic School, such as Goerres, Schubert and Schelling, though others were not discouraged. In the course of his visits to Italy he formed friendships with famous artists such as Thorwaldsen and Cornelius. He was especially anxious to obtain works of art, mainly sculpture, for the famous Munich collections which he started, and in this he had the advantage of the assistance of the painter Martin Wagner. He also set on foot movements for excavation and the collection of works of art in Greece, with excellent results.

Under the influence of the July revolution of 1830, however, he also began to be drawn into the current of reaction; and though he still declared himself openly against absolutism, and never took up such a hostile attitude towards constitutional ideas as his brother-in-law King Frederick William IV., he allowed the reactionary system of surveillance which commended itself to the German Confederation after 1830 to be introduced into Bavaria (see Bavaria: History). He continued, on the other hand, to do much for the economic development of the country. As a follower of the ideas of Friedrich List, he furthered the foundation of the Zollverein in the year 1833 and the making of canals. Railways he looked upon as a “necessary evil.”

In external politics peace was maintained on the whole after 1825. Temporary diplomatic complications arose between Bavaria and Baden in connexion with Louis’s favourite project of winning back the part then belonging to Baden of the old Palatinate, the land of his birth, which was always very dear to him.

Of European importance was his enthusiasm for the liberation of Greece from the rule of Turkey. Not only did he erect the Propyläen at Munich in her honour, but he also helped her in the most generous way both with money and diplomatic resources. And after his second son Otto had become king of Greece in 1832, Greek affairs became from time to time the central point of his foreign policy. In 1835 he made a visit to Greece, partly political, partly inspired by his old interest in art. But his son proved unequal to his task, and in 1862 was forced to abdicate (see Otho, king of Greece). For this unfortunate issue Louis was not without blame; for from the very first, owing to an exaggerated idealism and love of antiquity, he had totally misunderstood the national character of the Greeks and the problems involved in the attempts to govern them by bureaucratic methods.

In Bavaria, too, his government became more and more conservative, especially after Karl Abel became the head of the ministry in 1837. The king had not yet, it is true, altogether committed himself to the clerical ultras, and on the occasion of the dispute about the bishops in Prussia in the same year had taken up a wise attitude of compromise. But in Bavaria itself the strict Catholic party influenced affairs more and more decisively. For a while, indeed, this opposition did not impair the king’s popularity, due to his amiable character, his extraordinary services in beautifying his capital of Munich, and to his benevolence (it has been reckoned that he personally received about 10,000 letters asking for help every year, and that the money he devoted to charity amounted to about a fifth of his income). The year 1846, however, brought a change which had sad consequences. This was due to the king’s relations with the Spanish dancer Lola Montez, who appeared in Munich in October 1846, and soon succeeded by her beauty and wit in fascinating the king, who was always susceptible to feminine charms. The political importance of this lay in the fact that the royal mistress began to use her great influence against the clerical policy of the Abel ministry. So when the king was preparing the way for ennobling her, in order to introduce her into court circles, which were unwilling to receive her, the ministry protested in the famous memorandum of the 11th of February 1847 against the king’s demand for her naturalization as a Bavarian, the necessary preliminary to her ennoblement. The position was still further embittered by the fact that, owing to an indiscretion, the memorandum became known to the public. Thereupon the king, irritated and outraged, replaced Abel’s Clerical ministry by a more accommodating Liberal one under Zu Rhein under which Lola Montez without more difficulty became Countess Landsberg. Meanwhile, the criticism and opposition of the people, and especially of the students, was turned against the new leader of the court of Munich. On top of this came the revolutionary movement of 1848. The king’s position became more and more difficult, and under the pressure of popular opposition he was forced to banish the countess. But neither this nor the king’s liberal proclamation of the 6th of March succeeded in establishing peace, and in the capital especially the situation became increasingly threatening. All this made such a deep impression on the king, that on the 20th of March 1848 he abdicated in favour of his son Maximilian.

He now retired entirely into private life, and continued to play the Maecenas magnificently, frequently staying at his villa in Rome, the Villa Malta, and enjoying extraordinary vigour of mind and body up to the end of his days. His popularity, which had been shaken by the Montez affair, he soon recovered, especially among artists. To him Munich owes her finest art collections and most remarkable buildings. The monarch’s artistic sense led him not only to adorn his house with a number of works of antique art, but also to study German medieval art, which he did to good effect. To him Munich owes the acquisition of the famous Rhenish collection of the Boisserée brothers. The king also worked with great zeal for the care of monuments, and the cathedrals of Spires and Cologne enjoyed his special care. He was also an unfailing supporter of contemporary painting, in so far as it responded to his romantic tendencies, and he gave a fresh impulse to the arts of working in metal and glass. As visible signs of his permanent services to art Munich possesses the Walhalla, the Glyptothek, the two Pinakotheken, the Odeon, the University, and many other magnificent buildings both sacred and profane. The rôle which the Bavarian capital now plays as the leading art centre of Germany would have been an impossibility without the splendid munificence of Louis I.

He died on the 28th of February 1868 at Nice, and on the 9th of March was buried in Munich, amid demonstrations of great popular feeling.

The chief part of Louis’s records is contained in seven sealed chests in the archives of his family, and by the provisions of his will these were not to be opened till the year 1918. These records contain an extraordinarily large and valuable mass of historical material, including, as one item, 246 volumes of the king’s diary.

Bibliography.—Of the numerous pamphlets, especially of the years 1846-1848, we need only mention here: P. Erdmann, Lola Montez und die Jesuiten (1847); Geheimbericht über Bayern (1847), published by Fowmier in Deutsche Revue, vol. 27. See also F. v. Ritter, Beiträge zur Regierungsgeschichte König Ludwigs I. (1825-1826) (2 vols., 1853-1855); Sepp, Ludwig I. Augustus, König von Bayern und das Zeitalter der Wiedergeburt der Künste (1869; 2nd ed., 1903); Ottokar Lorenz, Drei Bücher Geschichte (1876; 2nd ed., 1879); K. Th. v. Heigel, Ludwig I. (1872; 2nd ed., 1888); “Ludwig I. und Martin Wagner,” Neue historische Vorträge (1883); “Ludwig I.,” Allgemeine deutsche Biographie (1884); “Ludwig I. als Freund der Geschichte” and “Kronprinz Ludwig in den Feldzügen von 1807 und 1809,” in Historische Vorträge und Studien (1887); Die Verlegung der Universität nach München, Rektoratsrede (1887); “Ludwig I. und die Münchener Hochschule,” Quellen und Abhandlungen zur Geschichte Bayerns, n.s. (1890); “Ludwig I. als Erzieher seines Volkes,” ib.; Reidelbach, Ludwig I. und seine Kunstschöpfungen (1887; 2nd ed., 1888); L. Trose, Ludwig I. in seinen Briefen an seinen Sohn, den König Otto von Griechenland (1891); L. v. Kobell, Unter den vier ersten Königen Bayerns (1894); A. Fournier, “Aus den Tagen der Lola Montez,” Neue Deutsche Rundschau (1901); M. Doeberé, “Ludwig I. und die deutsche Frage,” Festgabe für Heigel (1903); E. Füchs, Lola Montez in der Karrikatüre (1904); L. Brunner, Nürnberg 1848-1849 (1907).

(J. Hn.)

Illustration from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Lord Chamberlain" to "Luqman" Volume 17, Slice 1

LOUIS II., king of Bavaria (1845-1886), son of his predecessor Maximilian II. and his wife Maria, daughter of Prince William of Prussia, was born at Nymphenburg on the 25th of August 1845. Together with his brother Otto, three years younger than himself, Louis received, in accordance with the wishes of his learned father, a simple and serious education modelled on that of the German Gymnasien, of which the classical languages are the chief feature. Of modern languages the crown prince learnt only French, of which he remained fond all his life. The practical value of the prince’s training was small. It was not till he was eighteen years old that he received his first pocket-money, and at that age he had no ideas about money and its value. Military instruction, physical exercises and sport, in spite of the crown prince’s strong physique, received little attention. Thus Louis did not come enough into contact with young men of his own age, and consequently soon developed a taste for solitude, which was found at an early age to be combined with the romantic tendencies and musical and theatrical tastes traditional in his family.

Louis succeeded to the throne on the 10th of March 1864, at the age of eighteen. The early years of his reign were marked by a series of most serious political defeats for Bavaria. In the Schleswig-Holstein question, though he was opposed to Prussia and a friend of Duke Frederick VIII. of Augustenburg, he did not command the material forces necessary effectively to resist the powerful policy of Bismarck. Again, in the war of 1866, Louis and his minister von der Pfordten took the side of Austria, and at the conclusion of peace (August 22) Bavaria had, in addition to the surrender of certain small portions of her territory, to agree to the foundation of the North German Confederation under the leadership of Prussia. The king’s Bavarian patriotism, one of the few steadfast ideas underlying his policy, was deeply wounded by these occurrences, but he was face to face with the inevitable, and on the 10th of August wrote a letter of reconciliation to King William of Prussia. The defeat of Bavaria in 1866 showed clearly the necessity for a reform of the army. Under the new Liberal ministry of Hohenlohe (December 29, 1866—February 13, 1870) and under Prauckh as minister of war, a series of reforms were carried through which prepared for the victories of 1870. As regards his ecclesiastical policy, though Louis remained personally true to the Catholic Church, he strove for a greater independence of the Vatican. He maintained friendly relations with Ignaz von Döllinger, the leader of the more liberal Catholics who opposed the definition of papal infallibility, but without extending his protection to the anti-Roman movement of the Old Catholics. In spite of this the Old Bavarian opposition was so aroused by the Liberalism of the Hohenlohe ministry that at the beginning of 1870 Louis had to form a more Conservative cabinet under Count Bray-Steinburg. On the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War he at once took the side of Prussia, and gave orders for mobilization. In 1871 it was he who offered the imperial crown to the king of Prussia; but this was not done on his own initiative. Bismarck not only determined the king of Bavaria to take the decisive step which put an end to a serious diplomatic crisis, but actually drafted the letter to King William which Louis copied and despatched without changing a word. Louis placed very few difficulties in the way of the new German Empire under the leadership of Prussia, though his Bavarian particularism remained unchanged.

Though up till the beginning of the year 1880 he did not cease to give some attention to state affairs, the king’s interests lay in quite other spheres. His personal idiosyncrasies had, in fact, developed meanwhile in a most unhappy direction. His enthusiasm for all that is beautiful soon led him into dangerous bypaths. It found its most innocent expression in the earliest years of his reign when he formed an intimate friendship with Richard Wagner, whom from May 1864 to December 1865 he had constantly in his company. Louis was entirely possessed by the soaring ideas of the master, and was energetic in their realization. He not only established Wagner’s material position at the moment by paying 18,000 gulden of debts for him and granting him a yearly income of 4000 gulden (afterwards increased to 8000), but he also proceeded to realize the ambitious artistic plans of the master. A series of brilliant model performances of the Wagnerian music-dramas was instituted in Munich under the personal patronage of the king, and when the further plan of erecting a great festival theatre in Munich for the performance of Wagner’s “music of the future” broke down in the face of the passive resistance of the local circles interested, the royal enthusiast conceived the idea of building at Bayreuth, according to Wagner’s new principles, a theatre worthy of the music-dramas. For a time Louis was entirely under Wagner’s influence, the fantastic tendencies of whose art cast a spell over him, and there is extant a series of emotional letters of the king to Wagner. Wagner, on the whole, used his influence in artistic and not in political affairs.1 In spite of this the opposition to him became permanent. Public opinion in Bavaria for the most part turned against him. He was attacked for his foreign origin, his extravagance, his intrigues, his artistic utopias, and last but by no means least, for his unwholesome influence over the king. Louis in the end was compelled to give him up. But the relations between king and artist were by no means at an end. In face of the war which was imminent in 1866, and in the midst of the preparation for war, the king hastened in May to Triebschen, near Lucerne, in order to see Wagner again.2 In 1868 they were seen together in public for the last time at the festival performances in Munich. In 1876 Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen was performed for the first time at Bayreuth in the presence of the king. Later, in 1881, the king formed a similar friendship with Joseph Kainz the actor, but it soon came to an end. In January 1867 the young king became betrothed to Duchess Sophie of Bavaria (afterwards Duchesse d’Alençon), daughter of Duke Max and sister of the empress of Austria; but the betrothal was dissolved in October of the same year.

Though even in his later years he remained interested in lofty and intellectual pursuits, as may be gathered, apart from his enthusiasm for art and nature, from his wide reading in history, serious poetry and philosophy, yet in his private life there became increasingly marked the signs of moral and mental weakness which gradually gained the mastery over his once pure and noble nature. A prominent feature was his blind craving for solitude. He cut himself off from society, and avoided all intercourse with his family, even with his devotedly affectionate mother. With his ministers he came to communicate in writing only. At the end he was surrounded only by inferior favourites and servants. His life was now spent almost entirely in his castles far from the capital, which irked him more and more, or in short and hasty journeys, in which he always travelled incognito. Even the theatre he could now only enjoy alone. He arranged private performances in his castles or in Munich at fabulous cost, and appointed an official poet to his household. Later his avoidance of society developed into a dread of it, accompanied by a fear of assassination and delusions that he was being followed.

Side by side with this pathological development his inborn self-consciousness increased apace, turning more and more to megalomania, and impelling the weak-willed monarch to those extraordinary displays of magnificence which can still be admired to-day in the castles built or altered by him, such as Berg on the Starnberger See, Linderhof, Herrenchiemsee, Hohenschwangau, Neuschwanstein, &c., which are among the most splendid buildings in Germany. It is characteristic of the extravagance of the king’s ideas that he adopted as his model the style of Louis XIV. and fell into the habit of imitating the Roi Soleil. He no longer stayed for any length of time in one castle. Often he scoured the country in wild nocturnal rides, and madness gained upon him apace. His mania for buying things and making presents was comparatively harmless, but more serious matters were the wild extravagance which in 1880 involved him in financial ruin, his fits of destructive rage, and the tendency to the most cruel forms of abnormal vice. None the less, at the time when the king’s mental weakness was increasing, his character still retained lovable traits—his simple sense of beauty, his kindliness, and his highly developed understanding of art and artistic crafts. Louis’s love of beauty also brought material profit to Bavaria.

But the financial and political dangers which arose from the king’s way of life were so great that interference became necessary. On the 8th of June 1886 medical opinion declared him to be affected with chronic and incurable madness and he was pronounced incapable of governing. On the 10th of June his uncle, Prince Luitpold, assumed the regency, and after violent resistance the late king was placed under the charge of a mental specialist. On the 13th of June 1886 he met with his death by drowning in the Starnberger See, together with his doctor von Gudden, who had unwisely gone for a walk alone with his patient, whose physical strength was enormous. The details of his death will never be fully known, as the only possible eye-witness died with him. An examination of the brain revealed a condition of incurable insanity, and the faculty submitted a report giving the terrible details of his malady. Louis’s brother Otto, who succeeded him as king of Bavaria, was also incurably insane.

Bibliography.—K. v. Heigel, Ludwig II. (1893); Luise v. Kobell, Unter den vier ersten Königen Bayerns (1894); C. Bujer, Ludwig II. (1897); Luise v. Kobell, “Wilhelm I. und Ludwig II.” Deutsche Revue, 22; Ludwig II. und die Kunst (1898); Ludwig II. und Bismarck (1870, 1899); Anonym, Endlich völlige Klarheit über den Tod des Königs Ludwig II. ... (1900); Freiherr v. Völderndorff, “Aus meiner Hofzeit,” in Velhagen und Klasings Monatshefte (1900); Francis Gerard, The Romance of Ludwig II. of Bavaria; J. Bainville, Louis II. de Bavière (Paris, 1900); E. v. Possart, Die Separatvorstellungen von König Ludwig II. (1901); O. Bray-Steinburg, Denkwürdigkeiten (1901); S. Röcke, Ludwig II. und Richard Wagner (1903); W. Busch, Die Kämpfe über Reichsverfassung und Kaisertum (1906); Chlodwig Hohenlohe, Denkwürdigkeiten (2 vols., 1907); A. v. Ruville, Bayern und die Wiederaufrichtung des Deutschen Reiches (1909); K. A. v. Müller, Bayern im Jahre 1866 und die Berufung des Fürsten Hohenlohe (1909); G. Kuntzel, Bismarck und Bayern in der Zeit der Reichsgründung (1910); Hesselbarth, Die Enstehung des deutsch-framözischen Krieges (1910); W. Strohmayer, “Die Ahnentafel Ludwigs II. und Ottos I.,” Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, vol. vii. (1910).

(J. Hn.)

1 It was on Wagner’s advice that the king appointed Hohenlohe prime minister in 1866. See Hohenlohe-Schillingfurst, Prince Chlodwig zu, under Hohenlohe. [Ed.]

2 Hohenlohe (Denkwürdigkeiten) comments on the fact that the king did not even take the trouble to review the troops proceeding to the war. [Ed.]

Illustration from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Lord Chamberlain" to "Luqman" Volume 17, Slice 1

LOUIS II.1 (846-879), king of France, called “le Bègue” or “the Stammerer,” was a son of Charles II. the Bald, Roman emperor and king of the West Franks, and was born on the 1st of November 846. After the death of his elder brother Charles in 866 he became king of Aquitaine, and in October 877 he succeeded his father as king of the West Franks, but not as emperor. Having made extensive concessions to the nobles both clerical and lay, he was crowned king by Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, on the 8th of December following, and in September 878 he took advantage of the presence of Pope John VIII. at the council of Troyes to be consecrated afresh. After a feeble and ineffectual reign of eighteen months Louis died at Compiègne on the 10th or 11th of April 879. The king is described as “un homme simple et doux, aimant la paix, la justice et la religion.” By his first wife, Ansgarde, a Burgundian princess, he had two sons, his successors, Louis III. and Carloman; by his second wife, Adelaide, he had a posthumous son, Charles the Simple, who also became king of France.

(A. W. H.*)

1 The emperor Louis I. is counted as Louis I., king of France.

Illustration from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Lord Chamberlain" to "Luqman" Volume 17, Slice 1

LOUIS III. (c. 863-882), king of France, was a son of Louis II. and with his brother Carloman succeeded his father as king in April 879. A strong party, however, cast some doubts upon the legitimacy of the young princes, as the marriage of their parents had not been recognized by the emperor Charles the Bald; consequently it was proposed to offer the crown to the East Frankish ruler Louis, a son of Louis the German. But this plan came to nothing, and in September 879 the brothers were crowned at Ferrières by Ansègisus, archbishop of Sens. A few months later they divided their kingdom, Louis receiving the part of France north of the Loire. They acted together against the Northmen, over whom in August 881 they gained a memorable victory. They also turned against Boso who had been set up as king in Burgundy and Provence. On the 5th of August 882 Louis died at St Denis. He left no sons and Carloman became sole king.

(A. W. H.*)

Illustration from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Lord Chamberlain" to "Luqman" Volume 17, Slice 1

LOUIS IV. (921-954), king of France, surnamed “d’Outremer” (Transmarinus), was the son of Charles III. the Simple. In consequence of the imprisonment of his father in 922, his mother Odgiva (Eadgyfu), sister of the English king Æthelstan, fled to England with the young Louis—a circumstance to which he owes his surname. On the death of the usurper Rudolph (Raoul), Ralph of Burgundy, Hugh the Great, count of Paris, and the other nobles between whom France was divided, chose Louis for their king, and the lad was brought over from England and consecrated at Laon on the 19th of June 936. Although his de facto sovereignty was confined to the town of Laon and to some places in the north of France, Louis displayed a zeal beyond his years in procuring the recognition of his authority by his turbulent vassals. The beginning of his reign was marked by a disastrous irruption of the Hungarians into Burgundy and Aquitaine (937). In 939 Louis became involved in a struggle with the emperor Otto the Great on the question of Lorraine, the nobles of which district had sworn an oath of fidelity to the king of France. When Louis married Gerberga, sister of Otto, and widow of Giselbert, duke of Lorraine, there seemed to be a fair prospect of peace; but the war was resumed, Otto supporting the rebel lords of the kingdom of France, and peace was not declared until 942, at the treaty of Visé-sur-Meuse. On the death of William Longsword, duke of Normandy, who had been assassinated by Arnulf, count of Flanders, in December 942, Louis endeavoured to obtain possession of the person of Richard, the young son and heir of the late duke. After an unsuccessful expedition into Normandy, Louis fell into the hands of his adversaries, and was for some time kept prisoner at Rouen (945), and subsequently handed over to Hugh the Great, who only consented to release him on condition that he should surrender Laon. Menaced, however, by Louis’ brother-in-law, Otto the Great, and excommunicated by the council of Ingelheim (948), the powerful vassal was forced to make submission and to restore Laon to his sovereign. The last years of the reign were troubled by fresh difficulties with Hugh the Great and also by an irruption of the Hungarians into the south of France. Louis died on the 10th of September 954, and was succeeded by his son Lothair.

The chief authority for the reign is the chronicler Flodoard. See also Ph. Lauer, La Règne de Louis IV d’Outre-Mer (Paris, 1900); and A. Heil, Die politischen Beziehungen zwischen Otto dem Grossen und Ludwig IV. von Frankreich (Berlin, 1904).

(R. Po.)

Illustration from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Lord Chamberlain" to "Luqman" Volume 17, Slice 1

LOUIS V. (967-987), king of France, succeeded his father Lothair in March 986 at the age of nineteen, and finally embroiled the Carolingian dynasty with Hugh Capet and Adalberon, archbishop of Reims. From the absence of any important event in his one year’s reign the medieval chroniclers designated him by the words “qui nihil fecit,” i.e. “le Fainéant” or “do-nothing.” Louis died in May 987, his mother Emma being accused of having poisoned him. He had married Adelaide, sister of Geoffrey Grisegonelle, count of Anjou, but had no issue. His heir by blood was Charles, duke of Lower Lorraine, son of Louis IV., but the defection of the bishops and the treason of Adalberon (Ascelinus), bishop of Laon, assured the success of Hugh Capet.

See F. Lot, Les Derniers Carolingiens (Paris, 1891); and the Recueil des actes de Lothaire et de Louis V, edited by L. Halphen and F. Lot (1908).

(R. Po.)

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LOUIS VI. (1081-1137), king of France, surnamed “the Fat,” was the son of Philip I. of France and Bertha of Holland. He was also surnamed the “Wide-awake” and “the Bruiser,” and lost none of his energy when he earned the nickname by which he is known in history. In 1098 Louis was made a knight, and about the same time was associated with his father in the government, which the growing infirmities of Philip left more and more to his son, in spite of the opposition of Bertrada, the queen, whose criminal union with Philip had brought the anathema of the church. From 1100 to 1108 Louis by his victorious wars on the English and brigands had secured the army on his side, while the court supported Bertrada. Unable to make headway against him in war she attempted to poison him, and contemporary chroniclers attributed to this poison the pallor of his face, which seems to have been in remarkable contrast to his stalwart, and later his corpulent figure. Louis’ reign is one of the most important in the history of France. He is little less than the second founder of the Capetian dynasty. When the feeble and incompetent Philip I. died (29th of July 1108) Louis was faced by feudal barons as powerful as himself, and ready to rise against him. He was forced to have himself hurriedly crowned at Orleans, supported by a handful of vassals and some ecclesiastics. As king he continued the policy he had followed during the previous eight years, of securing the roads leading to Paris by putting down feudal brigands and destroying their strongholds in the Île-de-France. The castle of the most notorious of these, Hugues du Puiset, was three times taken and burned by the king’s men, but Hugues was spared to go back each time to his robber life, until he died on a crusade. In the north, Thomas de Marle, son of Enguerrand de Coucy, carried on a career of rapine and murder for almost thirty years before the king succeeded in taking him prisoner (1130). Twenty-four years of continuous war finally rooted out the robber barons who lived on the plunder of the roads leading to Paris: the lords of Montlhéri, who commanded the roads to Orleans, Melun and the south, those of Montmorency near St Denis on the north (who had to restore what they had robbed the abbey of St Denis), those of Le Puiset toward the west, on the way to Chartres, and many others. Parallel with this consolidation of his power in the ancestral domains Louis met energetically the Anglo-Norman danger, warring with Henry I. of England for twenty-five years. After the victory of Tinchebray (1106) Louis supported the claims of William Clito, son of Robert, duke of Normandy, against Henry I. A ruthless war followed, in which Louis was at times reduced to the sorest straits. In 1119, at a council held at Reims under the presidency of Pope Calixtus II., the enemies were reconciled; but William Clito’s claims were not satisfied, and in 1123 war began again on a larger scale. Henry I. induced the emperor Henry V. to join in the attack upon France; and, his heir having been drowned in the loss of the “White Ship,” won the count of Anjou by marrying his only daughter Matilda to Geoffrey, the Angevin heir (1127). The invasion of Henry V. was met by something like a national army, which gathered under Louis at Reims. “For a few days at least, the lord of the Île-de-France was truly a king of France” (Luchaire). Suger proudly gives the list of barons who appeared. Henry V. came no farther than Metz. Royalty had won great prestige. Even Theobald, count of Chartres, the king’s greatest enemy, the soul of feudal coalitions, came with his contingent. Shortly afterwards (1126), Louis was able to overawe the great count of Aquitaine, William IX., and force his vassal, the count of Auvergne, to treat justly the bishop of Clermont. In Flanders Louis interfered upon the assassination of Charles the Good. He caused the barons to elect as their count in Arras the same William Clito who claimed Normandy, and who was closely bound to the king. For a while Louis had Flanders absolutely at his disposal, but he had hardly left William alone (1127) when his brutal oppression roused both towns and nobles, who declared that Louis had no right to interfere in Flanders. The death of William Clito, and a savage war with his own seneschal, prevented Louis from effectually resenting this attitude; but Thierry of Alsace, the new count, consented in 1128 to receive from Louis the investiture of all his French fiefs, and henceforth lived on good terms with him. In all his wars—those mentioned are but a part of them—Louis fought in person. Proud of his strength, reckless in the charge as on the march, plunging into swollen rivers, entering blazing castles, he gained the reputation of a national hero, the protector of the poor, the church, the peasants and the towns. The communal movement grew during his reign, and he encouraged it on the fiefs of his vassals in order to weaken them; but the title “Father of the Communes” by which he was known in history is not deserved, though he did grant some privileges to towns on his domains. Neither was Louis the author of the movement for the emancipation of the serfs, as was formerly claimed. His attitude toward the movement was like that of his predecessors and contemporaries, to favour emancipation when it promised greater chance of profit, greater scope for exploitation of the peasants; otherwise to oppose it. He was a great benefactor to the church, aided the new, reformed monastic congregations of Cîteau, Prémontré and Fontevrault, and chose his two chief ministers from the clergy. Étienne de Garlande, whom Louis raised from obscurity to be archdeacon of Notre Dame at Paris, chancellor and seneschal of France, was all-powerful with the king from 1108 to 1127. His relatives monopolized the highest offices of the state. But the queen Adelaide became his enemy; both Ivo of Chartres and St Bernard bitterly attacked him; and the king suddenly stripped him of all his offices and honours. Joining the rebellious barons, Étienne then led a bitter war against the king for three years. When Louis had reduced him to terms he pardoned him and restored him to the chancellorship (1132), but not to his old power. Suger (q.v.), administrator of St Denis, enters the scene toward the close of this reign, but his great work belongs to the next. Louis VI. died on the 1st of August 1137, just a few days after his son, Louis the Young, had set out for the far south-west, the Aquitaine which had been won by the marriage with Eleanor. His wife was Adelaide, or Alice, daughter of Humbert II., count of Savoy, by whom he had seven sons and a daughter.

See A. Luchaire, Louis le Gros, annales de sa vie et son règne (1890), and the same writer’s volume, Les Premiers Capétiens, in E. Lavisse’s Histoire de France.

(J. T. S.*)

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LOUIS VII. (c. 1121-1180), king of France, son of Louis VI. the Fat, was associated with his father and anointed by Innocent II. in 1131. In 1137 he succeeded his father, and in the same year married at Bordeaux Eleanor, heiress of William II., duke of Aquitaine. In the first part of his reign he was vigorous and jealous of his prerogatives, but after his crusade his religiosity developed to such an extent as to make him utterly inefficient. His accession was marked by no disturbances, save the risings of the burgesses of Orleans and of Poitiers, who wished to organize communes. But soon he came into violent conflict with Pope Innocent II. The archbishopric of Bourges became vacant, and the king supported as candidate the chancellor Cadurc, against the pope’s nominee Pierre de la Châtre, swearing upon relics that so long as he lived Pierre should never enter Bourges. This brought the interdict upon the king’s lands. At the same time he became involved in a war with Theobald, count of Champagne, by permitting Rodolphe (Raoul), count of Vermandois and seneschal of France, to repudiate his wife, Theobald’s niece, and to marry Petronille of Aquitaine, sister of the queen of France. The war, which lasted two years (1142-44), was marked by the occupation of Champagne by the royal army and the capture of Vitry, where many persons perished in the burning of the church. Geoffrey the Handsome, count of Anjou, by his conquest of Normandy threatened the royal domains, and Louis VII. by a clever manœuvre threw his army on the Norman frontier and gained Gisors, one of the keys of Normandy. At his court which met in Bourges Louis declared on Christmas Day 1145 his intention of going on a crusade. St Bernard assured its popularity by his preaching at Vézelay (Easter 1146), and Louis set out from Metz in June 1147, on the overland route to Syria. The expedition was disastrous, and he regained France in 1149, overcome by the humiliation of the crusade. In the rest of his reign he showed much feebleness and poor judgment. He committed a grave political blunder in causing a council at Beaugency (on the 21st of March 1152) to annul his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine, under pretext of kinship, but really owing to violent quarrels during the crusade. Eleanor married Henry II. of England in the following May, and brought him the duchy of Aquitaine. Louis VII. led a half-hearted war against Henry for having married without the authorization of his suzerain; but in August 1154 gave up his rights over Aquitaine, and contented himself with an indemnity. In 1154 Louis married Constance, daughter of the king of Castile, and their daughter Marguerite he affianced imprudently by the treaty of Gisors (1158) to Henry, eldest son of the king of England, promising as dowry the Vexin and Gisors. Five weeks after the death of Constance, on the 4th of October 1160, Louis VII. married Adèle of Champagne, and Henry II. to counterbalance the aid this would give the king of France, had the marriage of their infant children celebrated at once. Louis VII. gave little sign of understanding the danger of the growing Angevin power, though in 1159 he made an expedition in the south to aid Raymond V., count of Toulouse, who had been attacked by Henry II. At the same time the emperor Frederick I. in the east was making good the imperial claims on Arles. When the schism broke out, Louis took the part of the pope Alexander III., the enemy of Frederick, and after two comedy-like failures of Frederick to meet Louis VII. at Saint Jean de Losne (on the 29th of August and the 22nd of September 1162), Louis definitely gave himself up to the cause of Alexander, who lived at Sens from 1163 to 1165. Alexander gave the king, in return for his loyal support, the golden rose. Louis VII. received Thomas Becket and tried to reconcile him with King Henry II. He supported Henry’s rebellious sons, but acted slowly and feebly, and so contributed largely to the break up of the coalition (1173-1174). Finally in 1177 the pope intervened to bring the two kings to terms at Vitry. By his third wife, Adèle, Louis had an heir, the future Philip Augustus, born on the 21st of August 1165. He had him crowned at Reims in 1179, but, already stricken with paralysis, he himself was not able to be present at the ceremony, and died on the 18th of September 1180. His reign from the point of view of royal territory and military power, was a period of retrogression. Yet the royal authority had made progress in the parts of France distant from the royal domains. More direct and more frequent connexion was made with distant feudatories, a result largely due to the alliance of the clergy with the crown. Louis thus reaped the reward for services rendered the church during the least successful portion of his reign.

See R. Hirsch, Studien zur Geschichte König Ludwigs VII. von Frankreich (1892); A. Cartellieri, Philipp II. August von Frankreich bis zum Tode seines Vaters, 1165-1180 (1891); and A. Luchaire in E. Lavisse’s Histoire de France, tome iii. 1st part, pp. 1-81.

(J. T. S.*)

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LOUIS VIII. (1187-1226), king of France, eldest son of Philip Augustus and of Isabella of Hainaut, was born in Paris on the 5th of September 1187. Louis was short, thin, pale-faced, with studious tastes, cold and placid temper, sober and chaste in his life. He left the reputation of a saint, but was also a warrior prince. In 1213 he led the campaign against Ferrand, count of Flanders; in 1214, while Philip Augustus was winning the victory of Bouvines, he held John of England in check, and was victorious at La Roche-aux-Moines. In the autumn of 1215 Louis received from a group of English barons, headed by Geoffrey de Mandeville, a request to “pluck them out of the hand of this tyrant” (John). Some 7000 French knights were sent over to England during the winter and two more contingents followed, but it was only after twenty-four English hostages had arrived in Paris that Louis himself prepared to invade England. The expedition was forbidden by the papal legate, but Louis set out from Calais on the 20th and landed at Stonor on the 22nd of May 1216. In three months he had obtained a strong foothold in eastern England, and in the end of July he laid siege to Dover, while part of his army besieged Windsor with a view to securing the safety of London. The pretexts on which he claimed the English crown were set down in a memorandum drawn up by French lawyers in 1215. These claims—that John had forfeited the crown by the murder of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, and that the English barons had the right to dispose of the vacant throne—lost their plausibility on the death of King John and the accession of his infant son as Henry III. in October 1216. The papal legate, Gualo, who had forbidden the enterprise, had arrived in England at the same time as Louis. He excommunicated the French troops and the English rebels, and Henry III. found a valiant defender in William Marshal, earl of Pembroke. After the “Fair of Lincoln,” in which his army was defeated, Louis was compelled to resign his pretensions, though by a secret article of the treaty of Lambeth (September 1217) he secured a small war indemnity. Louis had assisted Simon de Montfort in his war against the Albigenses in 1215, and after his return to France he again joined the crusade. With Simon’s son and successor, Amauri de Montfort, he directed the brutal massacre which followed the capture of Marmande. Philip II., suspicious of his son until the close of his life, took precautions to assure his obedience, narrowly watched his administration in Artois, which Louis held from his mother Isabella, and, contrary to the custom of the kings of France, did not associate his son with him by having him crowned. Philip Augustus dying on the 14th of July 1223, Louis VIII. was anointed at Reims on the 6th of August following. He surrounded himself with councillors whom his father had chosen and formed, and continued his father’s policy. His reign was taken up with two great designs: to destroy the power of the Plantagenets, and to conquer the heretical south of France. An expedition conquered Poitou and Saintonge (1224); in 1226 he led the crusade against the Albigenses in the south, forced Avignon to capitulate and received the submission of Languedoc. While passing the Auvergne on his return to Paris, he was stricken with dysentery, and died at Montpensier on the 8th of November 1226. His reign, short as it was, brought gains both to the royal domains and to the power of the crown over the feudal lords. He had married in 1200 Blanche of Castile, daughter of Alphonso IX. of Castile and granddaughter of Henry II. of England, who bore him twelve children; his eldest surviving son was his successor, Louis IX.

See C. Petit-Dutaillis, Étude sur la vie et le règne de Louis VIII. (Paris, 1894); and E. Lavisse, Histoire de France, tome iii. (1901).

(M. Br.)

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LOUIS IX. (1214-1270), king of France, known as Saint Louis, was born on the 25th of April 1214, and was baptized at Poissy. His father, Louis VIII., died in 1226, leaving the first minority since the accession of the Capetians, but his mother, Queen Blanche of Castile, proved more than a match for the feudal nobility. She secured her son’s coronation at Reims on the 29th of November 1226; and, mainly by the aid of the papal legate, Romano Bonaventura, bishop of Porto (d. 1243), and of Thibaut IV., count of Champagne, was able to thwart the rebellious plans of Pierre Mauclerc, duke of Brittany, and Philippe Hurepel, a natural son of Philip Augustus. Mauclerc’s opposition was not finally overcome, however, until 1234. Then in 1236 Thibaut, who had become king of Navarre, turned against the queen, formed an alliance with Brittany, marrying his daughter without royal consent to Jean le Roux, Mauclerc’s son, and attempted to make a new feudal league. The final triumph of the regent was shown when the king’s army assembled at Vincennes. His summons met with such general and prompt obedience as to awe Thibaut into submission without striking a blow. Thus the reign of Louis IX. began with royal prerogatives fully maintained; the kingdom was well under control, and Mauclerc and Thibaut were both obliged to go on crusade. But the influence of the strong-willed queen-mother continued to make itself felt to the close of her life. Louis IX. did not lack independence of character, but his confidence in his mother had been amply justified and he always acted in her presence like a child. This confidence he withheld from his wife, Margaret, daughter of Raymond Berenger, count of Provence, whom he married at Sens in May 1234. The reign was comparatively uneventful. A rising of the nobles of the south-west, stirred up by Isabella, widow of King John of England, and her husband, Hugh de Lusignan, count of the Marche, upon the occasion of the investment of Alphonse of Poitiers with the fiefs left him by Louis VIII. as a result of the Albigensian crusade, reached threatening dimensions in 1242, but the king’s armies easily overran Count Hugh’s territories, and defeated Henry III. of England, who had come to his aid, at Saintes. Isabella and her husband were forced to submit, and Raymond VII., count of Toulouse, yielded without resistance upon the advent of two royal armies, and accepted the peace of Lorris in January 1243. This was the last rising of the nobles in Louis’s reign.

At the end of 1244, during an illness, Louis took the cross. He had already been much distressed by the plight of John of Brienne, emperor at Constantinople, and bought from him the crown of thorns, parts of the true cross, the holy lance, and the holy sponge. The Sainte Chapelle in Paris still stands as a monument to the value of these relics to the saintly king. But the quarrel between the papacy and the emperor Frederick II., in which Louis maintained a watchful neutrality—only interfering to prevent the capture of Innocent IV. at Lyons—and the difficulties of preparation, delayed the embarkation until August 1248. His defeat and capture at Mansura, in February 1250, the next four years spent in Syria in captivity, in diplomatic intrigues, and finally in raising the fortifications of Caesarea and Joppa,—these events belong to the history of the crusades (q.v.). His return to France was urgently needed, as Blanche of Castile, whom he had left as regent, had died in November 1252, and upon the removal of her strong hand feudal turbulence had begun to show itself.

This period between his first and second crusades (1254-1269) is the real age of Saint Louis in the history of France. He imposed peace between warring factions of his nobility by mere moral force, backed up by something like an awakened public opinion. His nobles often chafed under his unrelenting justice but never dared rebel. The most famous of his settlements was the treaty of Paris, drawn up in May 1258 and ratified in December 1259, by which the claims of Henry III. of England were adjusted. Henry renounced absolutely Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, Maine and Poitou, and received, on condition of recognizing Louis as liege suzerain, all the fiefs and domains of the king of France in the dioceses of Limoges, Cahors and Perigueux, and the expectation of Saintonge south of the Charente, and Agenais, if they should fall to the crown of France by the death of Alphonse of Poitiers. In addition, Louis promised to provide Henry with sufficient money to maintain 500 knights for two years. This treaty was very unpopular in France, since the king surrendered a large part of France that Henry had not won; but Louis was satisfied that the absolute sovereignty over the northern provinces more than equalled the loss in the south. Historians still disagree as to its wisdom. Louis made a similar compromise with the king of Aragon in the treaty of Corbeil, 1258, whereby he gave up the claims of kings of France to Roussillon and Barcelona, which went back to the conquest of Charlemagne. The king of Aragon in his turn gave up his claims to part of Provence and Languedoc, with the exception of Narbonne. Louis’s position was strikingly shown in 1264 when the English barons submitted their attempt to bind Henry III. by the Provisions of Oxford to his arbitration. His reply in the “Dit” or Mise of Amiens was a flat denial of all the claims of the barons and failed to avert the civil war. Louis was more successful in preventing feuds between his own nobles: between the counts of Brittany and Champagne over the succession to Navarre; the dauphin of Vienne (Guigues VII.) and Charles of Anjou; the count of Burgundy and the count of Châlons; Henry of Luxemburg and the duke of Lorraine with the count of Bar. Upon the whole he maintained peace with his neighbours, although both Germany and England were torn with civil wars. He reluctantly consented to sanction the conquest of Naples by his brother, Charles, duke of Anjou, and it is possible that he yielded here in the belief that it was a step toward another crusade.

On the 24th of March 1267, Louis called to Paris such of his knights as were not with Charles of Anjou in Naples. No one knew why he had called them; but when the king in full assembly proclaimed his purpose of going on a second crusade, few ventured to refuse the cross. Three years of preparation followed; then on the 1st of July 1270 they sailed from Aigues Mortes for Tunis, whither the expedition seems to have been directed by the machinations of Charles of Anjou, who, it is claimed, persuaded his brother that the key to Egypt and to Jerusalem was that part of Africa which was his own most dangerous neighbour. After seventeen days’ voyage to Carthage, one month of the summer’s heat and plague decimated the army, and when Charles of Anjou arrived he found that Louis himself had died of the plague on the 25th of August 1270.

Saint Louis stands in history as the ideal king of the middle ages. An accomplished knight, physically strong in spite of his ascetic practices, fearless in battle, heroic in adversity, of imperious temperament, unyielding when sure of the justness of his cause, energetic and firm, he was indeed “every inch a king.” Joinville says that he was taller by a head than any of his knights. His devotions would have worn out a less robust saint. He fasted much, loved sermons, regularly heard two masses a day and all the offices, dressing at midnight for matins in his chapel, and surrounded even when he travelled by priests on horseback chanting the hours. After his return from the first crusade, he wore only grey woollens in winter, dark silks in summer. He built hospitals, visited and tended the sick himself, gave charity to over a hundred beggars daily. Yet he safeguarded the royal dignity by bringing them in at the back door of the palace, and by a courtly display greater than ever before in France. His naturally cold temperament was somewhat relieved by a sense of humour, which however did not prevent his making presents of haircloth shirts to his friends. He had no favourite, nor prime minister. Louis was canonized in 1297.

As a statesman Louis IX. has left no distinct monument. The famous “Établissements of St Louis” has been shown in our own day to have been private compilation. It was a coutumier drawn up before 1273, including, as well as some royal decrees, the civil and feudal law of Anjou, Maine and the Orléanais. Recent researches have also denied Louis the credit of having aided the communes. He exploited them to the full. His standpoint in this respect was distinctly feudal. He treated his clergy as he did his barons, enforcing the supremacy of royal justice, and strongly opposing the exactions of the pope until the latter part of his reign, when he joined forces with him to extort as much as possible from the clergy. At the end of the reign most of the sees and monasteries of France were in debt to the Lombard bankers. Finally, the reign of Saint Louis saw the introduction of the pontifical inquisition into France.

There are numerous portraits of St Louis, but they are unauthentic and contradictory. In 1903 M. Salomon Reinach claimed to have found in the heads sculptured in the angles of the arches of the chapel at St Germain portraits of St Louis, his brothers and sisters, and Queen Marguerite, or Blanche, made between 1235 and 1240. This conjectured portrait somewhat resembles the modern type, which is based upon a statue of Charles V. once in the church of the Celestins in Paris, and which Lenoir mistakenly identified as that of Louis IX. The king had eleven children, six sons and five daughters, among them being his successor, Philip III., and Robert, count of Clermont, the ancestor of Henry IV.

The best contemporary accounts of Louis IX. are the famous Memoirs of the Sire Jean de Joinville (q.v.), published by N. de Wailly for the Soc. de l’Hist. de France, under the title Histoire de Saint Louis (Paris, 1868), and again with translation (1874); English translation by J. Hutton (1868). See also William of Nangis, Gesta Ludovici IX., edited by M. Bouquet in vol. xx. of the Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France. Of modern works may be mentioned C. V. Langlois in E. Lavisse’s Histoire de France, tome iii., with references to literature; Frederick Perry, Saint Louis, the Most Christian King (New York, 1901); E. J. Davis, The Invasion of Egypt by Louis IX. of France (1898); H. A. Wallon, Saint Louis et son temps (1875); A. Lecoy de la Marche, Saint Louis (Tours, 1891); and E. Berger, Saint Louis et Innocent IV (Paris, 1893), and Histoire de Blanche de Castille (1895). See also The Court of a Saint, by Winifred F. Knox (1909).

(J. T. S.*)

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LOUIS X. (1289-1316), king of France and Navarre, called le Hutin or “the Quarreller,” was the son of Philip IV. and of Jeanne of Navarre. He was born at Paris on the 4th of October 1289, took the title king of Navarre on the death of his mother, on the 2nd of April 1305, and succeeded Philip IV. in France on the 29th of November 1314, being crowned at Reims in August 1315. The origin of his surname is uncertain. Louis X. is a somewhat indistinct figure among the kings of France, the preponderating influence at court during his short reign being that of his uncle, Charles of Valois. The reign began with reaction against the policy of Philip IV. Private vengeance was wreaked on Enguerrand de Marigny, who was hanged, Pierre de Latilli, bishop of Châlons and chancellor, and Raoul de Presle, advocate of the parlement, who were imprisoned. The leagues of the lesser country gentry, formed in 1314 before the accession of Louis, continued to demand the ancient privileges of the nobility,—tourneys, private wars and judgment of nobles not by king’s officers but by their peers—and to protest against the direct call by the king of their vassals to the royal army. Louis X. granted them charters in which he made apparent concessions, but used evasive formulas which in reality ceded nothing. There was a charter to the Normans, one to the Burgundians, one to the Languedocians (1315). Robert de Béthune, count of Flanders, refused to do homage, and his French fiefs were declared confiscate by a court of his peers. In August 1315 Louis X. led an army toward Lille, but the flooded Lys barred his passage, the ground was so soaked with rains that the army could not advance, and it was thrown back, without a battle, on Tournai. Need of money inspired one famous ordinance of this reign; in 1315 the serfs of the royal domains were invited to buy their civil liberty,—an invitation which did not meet with great enthusiasm, as the freedman was merely freed for further exploitation, and Philip V. was obliged to renew it in 1318. Louis X. died suddenly on the 5th of June 1316. His first wife was Margaret, daughter of Robert II., duke of Burgundy; she was accused of adultery and died a prisoner in the château Gaillard. By her he had one daughter, Jeanne, wife of Philip, count of Evreux and king of Navarre. By his second wife Clémence, daughter of Charles Martel, titular king of Hungary, he left a posthumous son, King John I.

See Ch. Dufayard, “La réaction feodale sous les fils de Philippe le Bel,” in Revue historique (1894); Paul Lehugeur, Histoire de Philippe le Long, roi de France (Paris, 1897); and Joseph Petit, Charles de Valois (Paris, 1900).

(J. T. S.*)

Illustration from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Lord Chamberlain" to "Luqman" Volume 17, Slice 1

LOUIS XI. (1423-1483), king of France, the son of Charles VII. and his queen, Marie of Anjou, was born on the 3rd of July 1423, at Bourges, where his father, then nicknamed the “King of Bourges,” had taken refuge from the English. At the birth of Louis XI. part of France was in English hands; when he was five years old, Joan of Arc appeared; he was just six when his father was crowned at Reims. But his boyhood was spent apart from these stirring events, in the castle of Loches, where his father visited him rarely. John Gerson, the foremost theologian of France, wrote a manual of instructions (still extant) for the first of his tutors, Jean Majoris, a canon of Reims. His second tutor, Bernard of Armagnac, was noted for his piety and humility. If, as has been claimed, Louis owed to them any of his tendency to prefer the society of the poor, or rather of the bourgeois, to that of the nobility, their example was his best lesson in the craft of kingship. In June 1436, when scarcely thirteen, he was married to Margaret (c. 1425-1445), daughter of James I. of Scotland, a princess of about his own age, but sickly and romantic, and in every way his opposite. Three years after this unhappy marriage Louis entered upon his stormy political career. Sent by his father in 1439 to direct the defence of Languedoc against the English, and to put down the brigandage in Poitou, he was induced by the rebellious nobles to betray his trust and place himself at the head of the Praguerie (q.v.). Charles VII. pardoned him this rebellion, due to his ambition and the seductive proposal of the nobles to make him regent. The following year he was fighting the English, and in 1443 aided his father to suppress the revolt of the count of Armagnac. His first important command, however, was in the next year, when he led an army of from 15,000 to 20,000 mercenaries and brigands,—the product of the Hundred Years’ War,—against the Swiss of the canton of Basel. The heroism of some two hundred Swiss, who for a while held thousands of the French army at bay, made a great impression on the young prince. After an ineffective siege of Basel, he made peace with the Swiss confederation, and led his robber soldiers into Alsace to ravage the country of the Habsburgs, who refused him the promised winter quarters. Meanwhile his father, making a parallel campaign in Lorraine, had assembled his first brilliant court at Nancy, and when Louis returned it was to find the king completely under the spell of Agnes Sorel. He at first made overtures to members of her party, and upon their rejection through fear of his ambition, his deadly hatred of her and of them involved the king. The death in 1445 of his wife Margaret, who was a great favourite of Charles VII., made the rupture complete. From that year until the death of the king father and son were enemies. Louis began his rebellious career by a futile attempt to seduce the cities of Agenais into treason, and then he prepared a plot to seize the king and his minister Pierre de Brézé. Antoine de Chabannes, who was to be the instrument of the plot, revealed it to Charles, and Louis was mildly punished by being sent off to Dauphiné (1447). He never saw his father again.

Louis set out to govern his principality as though it were an independent state. He dismissed the governor; he determined advantageously to himself the boundaries between his state and the territories of the duke of Savoy and of the papacy; and he enforced his authority over perhaps the most unruly nobility in western Europe, both lay and ecclesiastical. The right of private warfare was abolished; the bishops were obliged to give up most of their temporal jurisdiction, the scope of their courts was limited, and appeals to Rome were curtailed. On the other hand, Louis granted privileges to the towns and consistently used their alliance to overthrow the nobility. He watched the roads, built new ones, opened markets, protected the only bankers of the country, the Jews, and reorganized the administration so as to draw the utmost revenue possible from the prosperity thus secured. His ambition led him into foreign entanglements; he made a secret treaty with the duke of Savoy which was to give him right of way to Genoa, and made arrangements for a partition of the duchy of Milan. The alliance with Savoy was sealed by the marriage of Louis with Charlotte, daughter of Duke Lodovico, in 1452, in spite of the formal prohibition of Charles VII. The king marched south, but withdrew again leaving his son unsubdued. Four years later, as Charles came to the Bourbonnais, Louis, fearing for his life, fled to Flanders to the court of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, leaving Dauphiné to be definitely annexed to the crown of France. The policy of the dauphin was reversed, his ten years’ work was undone. Meanwhile he was installed in the castle of Genappe, in Brabant, where he remained until the death of his father. For this he waited impatiently five years, keeping himself posted by spies of every stage of the king’s last illness, and thus laying himself open to the accusation, believed in by Charles himself, that he had hastened the end by poison, a charge which modern historians deny.

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