|
|
Home
Pearsall Surname Project
Number of Pearsalls By Location
Maps by Family
Surname
History and Genealogy
of the Pearsall Family in England
and America:
Volume I
Front Cover
Inside Front Cover
The Motive
Thanks
Illustrations
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Appendix I
Volume II
Volume III
|
|
guests
of King Athelstane. An intercourse had been
opened by Count Hugh with that monarch for the purpose of obtaining in
marriage Ethilda, the sister of Athelstane. Splendid presents enforced the request.
The wishes of Hugh were gratified and he became the brother of Athelstane.
It
was on the motion of Hugh that the Assembly agreed to elect Louis as King
of the West Franks, and to send an embassy to Athelstan, to ask for the
restoration of his nephew to the throne of his fathers. Louis crossed the
sea, he landed in the realm which was now his, he
sprang on his horse, and rode on amid the cheers of his new subjects. He
went to his royal city of Laôn,
where he was consecrated king by Artald
Archbishop of Rheims; he then went with
his guardian on an expedition into Burgundy,
more to his guardian's profit than to his own. He then visited his
powerful vassal at Paris;
but in the next year, 937, safe on the rock of Laôn,
he threw off the yoke, he declared his independence of Duke Hugh, and
sent for his mother Eadgifu, seemingly to take
Hugh's place as his chief counselor. William of Normandy took the oath of
fealty to the young prince, in common with the other great vassals of the
crown; but he was faithless to his engagement, and subsequently joined
Count Hugh in making war upon the last descendant of Charlemagne, whom
they had themselves raised to the throne of his ancestors. But Louis
having made a truce with Hugh turned his arms against Normandy. William negotiated for peace
with the king, and received from him a charter of confirmation of the
duchy. [The Norman Con-quest, by Edward Freeman, vol. 1, page 132-135.
History of the Northmen, by Henry Wheaton.]
The
reign of Louis-Louis From-beyond-Sea-is of itself enough to confute the
common error of believing that the line of Charles the Great ended in a
race of imbecile faineants, like those whom
Pippin had set aside. Louis may be called ambitious, turbulent, and
perfidious, but no man was ever less of a faineant.
His life was in truth one of preternatural activity. Early adversity,
combined with an education at the hands of Glorious Athelstane,
had brought out some very vigorous qualities in his young nephew. If
Louis was ambitious, turbulent and perfidious, he was but paying off Hugh
of Paris and William of Rouen in their own coin. In truth no two
positions can well be more opposed to one another than the position of
the later Karlings and that of the later Merwings. The Duke of the French might now and then
put on something of the guise of a Mayor of the Palace, but Pippin and
Hugh had very different masters to deal with. The nominal ruler of a vast
realm, led about as an occasional pageant and leaving the government of
his dominions to an all-powerful minister, is the exact opposite to a
king whose domains have shrunk up to the territory of a single city, and
who has to spend his life in hard blows to preserve that last remnant of
his heritage from the ambition of vassals whose territories are more
extensive than his own. Louis had to contend in turn against Normandy, Vermandois, and
Ducal France,
and now and then he was able to give each of them nearly as good as they
brought. And, small as was the extent of the king's actual domains, there
was still an abiding reverence for the royal name, which breathes in
every page of the chroniclers, and which was not without influence even
on the minds of the men who
|
|
