This did not, however, imply that the country was pacified, for many of the counts still maintained their resistance.
But Louis the Pious had now to renew the struggle with the King of Germany, who as well as Pepin was injured by the partition of 839, and had invaded Saxony and Thuringia. The Emperor advanced against him and had no great difficulty in thrusting him back into Bavaria. But as he was returning to Worms, where his son Lothar, who had gone back to Italy after the late partition, had been appointed to meet him, the cough which had long tormented him became worse. Having fallen dangerously ill at Salz, he had himself moved to an island in the Rhine opposite the palace of Ingelheim. Here he breathed his last in his tent on 20 June 840 in the arms of his half-brother Drogo, sending his pardon to his son Louis. Before his death he had proclaimed Lothar Emperor, commending Judith and Charles to his protection and ordering that the insignia of the imperial authority, the sceptre, crown and sword, should be sent to him.
The dying Emperor might well have despaired of unity for Charlemagne's Empire and have foreseen that the civil wars of the last twenty years would be renewed more fiercely than ever among his sons. As the outcome of his reign was unfortunate, and as under him the first manifestations appeared of the two scourges which were about to destroy the Frank Empire, the insubordination of the great lords on one side and the Norman invasions on the other, historians have been too easily led to accuse Louis the Pious of weakness and incapacity. He was long known by the somewhat contemptuous epithet of the Debonnaire (the good-natured, the easy-going). But in truth his life-story shews him to have been capable of perseverance and at times even of energy and resolution, although as a rule the energy was of no long duration. Louis the Pious found himself confronted by opponents, who took his clemency for a sign of weakness, and knew how to exploit his humility for their own profit by making him appear an object of contempt. But above all, circumstances were adverse to him. He was the loser in the long struggle with his sons and with the magnates; this final ill-success rather than his own character explains the severe judgment so often passed upon the son of the great Charles.
