ts. The name of
Debonnair is suited to him; it expresses his moral worth and his
political incapacity, both at once.

As king of Aquitania, in the time of Charlemagne, Louis made himself
esteemed and loved; his justice, his suavity, his probity, and his piety
were pleasing to the people, and his weaknesses disappeared under the
strong hand of his father. When he became emperor, he began his reign by
a reaction against the excesses, real or supposed, of the preceding
reign. Charlemagne's morals were far from regular, and he troubled
himself but little about the license prevailing in his family or his
palace. At a distance he ruled with a tight and a heavy hand. Louis
established at his court, for his sisters as well as his servants,
austere regulations. He restored to the subjugated Saxons certain of the
rights of which Charlemagne had deprived them. He sent out everywhere
his commissioners (_missi dominici_) with orders to listen to complaints
and redress grievances, and to mitigate his father's rule, which was
rigorous in its application, and yet insufficient to repress disturbance,
notwithstanding its preventive purpose and its watchful supervision.

Almost simultaneously with his accession, Louis committed an act more
serious and compromising. He had, by his wife Hermengarde, three sons,
Lothaire, Pepin, and Louis, aged respectively nineteen, eleven, and
eight. In 817 Louis summoned at Aix-la-Chapelle the general assembly of
his dominions; and there, whilst declaring that "neither to those who
were wisely-minded, nor to himself, did it appear expedient to break up,
for the love he bare his sons and by the will of man, the unity of the
empire, preserved by God himself," he had resolved to share with his
eldest son, Lothaire, the imperial throne. Lothaire was in fact crowned
emperor; and his two brothers, Pepin and Louis, were crowned king, "in
order that they might reign, after their father's death and under their
brother and lord, Lothaire, to wit: Pepin, over Aquitaine and a great
part of Southern Gaul and of Burgundy; Louis, beyond the Rhine, over
Bavaria and the divers peoplets in the east of Germany." The rest of
Gaul and of Germany, as well as the kingdom of Italy, was to belong to
Lothaire, emperor and head of the Frankish monarchy, to whom his brothers
would have to repair year by year to come to an understanding with him
and receive his instructions. The last-named kingdom, the most
considerable