s. Those princes who
are known by a name in addition to Charles (Charles Albert, &c.) will be
found after the private individuals bearing Charles as a surname.

CHARLES II.[1] called THE BALD (823-877), Roman emperor and king of the
West Franks, was the son of the emperor Louis the Pious and of his
second wife Judith and was born in 823. The attempts made by his father
to assign him a kingdom, first Alamannia (829), then the country between
the Meuse and the Pyrenees (839), at the expense of his half-brothers
Lothair and Louis led to a rising on the part of these two (see LOUIS
I., the Pious). The death of the emperor in 840 was the signal for the
outbreak of war between his sons. Charles allied himself with his
brother Louis the German to resist the pretensions of the emperor
Lothair, and the two allies conquered him in the bloody victory of
Fontenoy-en-Puisaye (25 June 841). In the following year, the two
brothers confirmed their alliance by the celebrated oaths of Strassburg,
made by Charles in the Teutonic language spoken by the subjects of
Louis, and by Louis in the Romance tongue of Charles's subjects. The war
was brought to an end by the treaty of Verdun (August 843), which gave
to Charles the Bald the kingdom of the western Franks, which practically
corresponded with what is now France, as far as the Meuse, the Saone
and the Rhone, with the addition of the Spanish March as far as the
Ebro. The first years of his reign up to the death of Lothair I. (855)
were comparatively peaceful, and during them was continued the system of
"confraternal government" of the sons of Louis the Pious, who had
various meetings with one another, at Coblenz (848), at Meersen (851),
and at Attigny (854). In 858 Louis the German, summoned by the
disaffected nobles, invaded the kingdom of Charles, who fled to
Burgundy, and was only saved by the help of the bishops, and by the
fidelity of the family of the Welfs, who were related to Judith. In 860
he in his turn tried to seize the kingdom of his nephew, Charles of
Provence, but met with a repulse. On the death of Lothair II. in 869 he
tried to seize his dominions, but by the treaty of Mersen (870) was
compelled to share them with Louis the German. Besides this, Charles had
to struggle against the incessant rebellions in Aquitaine, against the
Bretons, whose revolt was led by their chief Nomenoe and Erispoe, and
who inflicted on the king the defeats of Ballon (845) and Juvardeil
(851