re. 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 younger 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 arrival of Louis the Germanic
with his troops helped to swell the forces and increase the confidence of
Charles; and it was on the 21st of June, 841, exactly a year after the
death of Louis the Debonnair, that the two armies, that of Lothaire and
Pepin on the one side, and that of Charles the Bald and Louis the
Germanic on the other, stood face to face in the neighborhood of the
village of Fontenailles, six leagues from Auxerre, on the rivulet of
Audries. Never, according to such evidence as is forthcoming, since the
battle on the plains of Chalons against the Huns, and that of Poitiers
against the Saracens, had so great masses of men been engaged. "There
would be nothing untruthlike," says that scrupulous authority, M.
Fauriel, "in putting the whole number of combatants at three hundred
thousand; and there is nothing to show that either of the two armies was
much less numerous than the other." However that may be, the leaders
hesitated for four days to come to blows; and whilst they were
hesitating, the old favorite not only of Louis the Debonnair, but also,
according to several chroniclers, of the Empress Judith, held himself
aloof with his troops in the vicinity, having made equal promise of
assistance to both sides, and waiting, to govern his decision, for the
prospect afforded by the first conflict. The battle began on the 25th of
June, at daybreak, and was at first in favor of Lothaire; but the troops
of Charles the Bald recovered the advantage which had been lost by Louis
the Germanic, and the action was soon nothing but a terribly simple scene
of carnage between enormous masses of men, charging hand to hand, again
and a