There is no telling whether, in the credulousness of his good nature,
Louis had, at his dying hour, any great confidence in the appeal he made
to his son Lothair, and in the impression which would be produced on his
other son, Louis of Bavaria, by the pardon bestowed. The prayers of the
dying are of little avail against violent passions and barbaric manners.
Scarcely was Louis the Debonair dead, when Lothair was already
conspiring against young Charles, and was in secret alliance, for his
despoilment, with Pépin II, the late King of Aquitaine's son, who had
taken up arms for the purpose of seizing his father's kingdom, in the
possession of which his grandfather Louis had not been pleased to
confirm him. Charles suddenly learned that his mother Judith was on the
point of being besieged in Poitiers by the Aquitanians; and, in spite of
the friendly protestations sent to him by Lothair, it was not long
before he discovered the plot formed against him. He was not wanting in
shrewdness or energy; and, having first provided for his mother's
safety, he set about forming an alliance, in the cause of their common
interests, with his other brother, Louis the Germanic, who was equally
in danger from the ambition of Lothair. The historians of the period do
not say what negotiator was employed by Charles on this distant and
delicate mission; but several circumstances indicate that the empress
Judith herself undertook it; that she went in quest of the King of
Bavaria; and that it was she who, with her accustomed grace and address,
determined him to make common cause with his youngest against their
eldest brother. Divers incidents retarded for a whole year the outburst
of this family plot, and of the war of which it was the precursor. The
position of the young king Charles appeared for some time a very bad
one; but "certain chieftains," says the historian Nithard, "faithful to
his mother and to him, and having nothing more to lose than life or
limb, chose rather to die gloriously than to betray their King." The