Debonnaire dead, Louis of Bavaria, and Charles afterwards called the Bald, and their nephew Pepin, of Aquitaine, join in league against the Emperor Lothair their eldest brother.  They fight near to Auxerre the most bloody battle that ever was stroken in France:  in which, the marvellous loss of nobility, and men of war, gave courage to the Saracens to invade Italy; to the Huns to fall upon Almaine; and the Danes to enter upon Normandy.  Charles the Bald by treason seizeth upon his nephew Pepin, kills him in a cloister:  Carloman rebels against his father Charles the Bald, the father burns out the eyes of his son Carloman; Bavaria invades the Emperor Lothair his brother, Lothair quits the Empire, he is assailed and wounded to the heart by his own conscience, for his rebellion against his father, and for his other cruelties, and dies in a monastery.  Charles the Bald, the uncle, oppresseth his nephews the sons of Lothair, he usurpeth the Empire to the prejudice of Louis of Bavaria his elder brother; Bavaria’s armies and his son Carloman are beaten, he dies of grief, and the usurper Charles is poisoned by Zedechias a Jew, his physician, his son Louis le Begue dies of the same drink.  Begue had Charles the Simple and two bastards, Louis and Carloman; they rebel against their brother, but the eldest breaks his neck, the younger is slain by a wild boar; the son of Bavaria had the same ill destiny, and brake his neck by a fall out of a window in sporting with his companions.  Charles the Gross becomes lord of all that the sons of Debonnaire held in Germany; wherewith not contented, he invades Charles the Simple:  but being-forsaken of his nobility, of his wife, and of his understanding, he dies a distracted beggar.  Charles the Simple is held in wardship by Eudes, Mayor of the Palace, then by Robert the brother of Eudes:  and lastly, being taken by the Earl of Vermandois; he is forced to die in the prison of Peron, Louis the son of Charles the Simple breaks his neck in chasing a wolf, and of the two sons of this Louis, the one dies of poison, the other dies in the prison of Orleans; after whom Hugh Capet, of another race, and a stranger to the French, makes himself king.

These miserable ends had the issues of Debonnaire, who after he had once apparelled injustice with authority, his sons and successors took up the fashion, and wore that garment so long without other provision, as when the same was torn from their shoulders, every man despised them as miserable and naked beggars.  The wretched success they had (saith a learned Frenchman) shows, “que en ceste mort il y avait plus du fait des homines que de Pieu, ou de la justice”:  “that in the death of that Prince, to wit, of Bernard the son of Pepin, the true heir of Charlemagne, men had more meddling than either God or justice had.”