lost
by those of 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 again, with a front extending over a
couple of leagues. Before midday the slaughter, the plunder, the
spoliation of the dead--all was over; the victory of Charles and Louis
was complete; the victors had retired to their camp, and there remained
nothing on the field of battle but corpses in thick heaps or a long
line, according as they had fallen in the disorder of flight or steadily
fighting in their ranks.... "Accursed be this day!" cries Angilbert, one
of Lothair's officers, in rough Latin verse; "be it unnumbered in the
return of the year, but wiped out of all remembrance! Be it unlit by the
light of the sun! Be it without either dawn or twilight! Accursed, also,
be this night, this awful night in which fell the brave, the most expert
in battle! Eye ne'er hath seen more fearful slaughter: in streams of
blood fell Christian men; the linen vestments of the dead did whiten the
champaign even as it is whitened by the birds of autumn!"

In spite of this battle, which appeared a decisive one, Lothair made
zealous efforts to continue the struggle; he scoured the countries
wherein he hoped to find partisans; to the Saxons he promised the
unrestricted reestablishment of their pagan worship, and several of the
Saxon tribes responded to his appeal. Louis the Germanic and Charles the
Bald, having information of these preliminaries, resolved to solemnly
renew their alliance and, seven months after their victory at
Fontenailles, in February, 842, they repaired both of them, each with
his army, to Argentaria, on the right bank of the Rhine, between Bale
and Strasburg, and there, at an open-air meeting, Louis first,
addressing the chieftains about him in the German tongue, said: "Ye all
know how often, since our father's death, Lothair hath attacked us, in
order to destroy us, this my brother and me. Having never been able, as
brothers and Christians, or in any just way, to obtain peace from him,
we were constrained to appeal to the judgment of God. Lothair was beaten
and retired, whither he could, with his following; for we, restrained by
paternal affection and moved with compassion for Christian people, were
unwilling to pursue them to extermination. Neither then nor aforetime
did we demand aught else save that each of us should be maintained in
his rights. But