in order to see Wagner again.[1] In 1868 they were seen together in public for the last time at the festival performances in Munich. In 1876 Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen was performed for the first time at Bayreuth in the presence of the king. Later, in 1881, the king formed a similar friendship with Joseph Kainz the actor, but it soon came to an end. In January 1867 the young king became betrothed to Duchess Sophie of Bavaria (afterwards Duchesse d’Alençon), daughter of Duke Max and sister of the empress of Austria; but the betrothal was dissolved in October of the same year.
Though even in his later years he remained interested in lofty and intellectual pursuits, as may be gathered, apart from his enthusiasm for art and nature, from his wide reading in history, serious poetry and philosophy, yet in his private life there became increasingly marked the signs of moral and mental weakness which gradually gained the mastery over his once pure and noble nature. A prominent feature was his blind craving for solitude. He cut himself off from society, and avoided all intercourse with his family, even with his devotedly affectionate mother. With his ministers he came to communicate in writing only. At the end he was surrounded only by inferior favourites and servants. His life was now spent almost entirely in his castles far from the capital, which irked him more and more, or in short and hasty journeys, in which he always travelled incognito. Even the theatre he could now only enjoy alone. He arranged private performances in his castles or in Munich at fabulous cost, and appointed an official poet to his household. Later his avoidance of society developed into a dread of it, accompanied by a fear of assassination and delusions that he was being followed.
Side by side with this pathological development his inborn self-consciousness increased apace, turning more and more to megalomania, and impelling the weak-willed monarch to those extraordinary displays of magnificence which can still be admired to-day in the castles built or altered by him, such as Berg on the Starnberger See, Linderhof, Herrenchiemsee, Hohenschwangau, Neuschwanstein, &c., which are among the most splendid buildings in Germany. It is characteristic of the extravagance of the king’s ideas that he adopted as his model the style of Louis XIV. and fell into the habit of imitating the Roi Soleil. He no longer stayed for any length of time in one castle. Often he scoured the country in wild nocturnal rides, and madness gained upon him apace. His mania for buying things and making presents was comparatively harmless, but more serious matters were the wild extravagance which in 1880 involved him in financial ruin, his fits of destructive rage, and the tendency to the most cruel forms of abnormal vice. None the less, at the time when the king’s mental weakness was increasing, his character still retained lovable traits—his simple sense of beauty, his kindliness, and his highly developed understanding of art and artistic crafts. Louis’s love of beauty also brought material profit to Bavaria.
But the financial and political dangers which arose from the king’s way of life were so great that interference became necessary. On the 8th of June 1886 medical opinion declared him to be affected with chronic and incurable madness and he was pronounced incapable of governing. On the 10th of June his uncle, Prince Luitpold, assumed the regency, and after violent resistance the late king was placed under the charge of a mental specialist. On the 13th of June 1886 he met with his death by drowning in the Starnberger See, together with his doctor von Gudden, who had unwisely gone for a walk alone with his patient, whose physical strength was enormous. The details of his death will never be fully known, as the only possible eye-witness died with him. An examination of the brain revealed a condition of incurable insanity, and the faculty submitted a report giving the terrible details of his malady. Louis’s brother Otto, who succeeded him as king of Bavaria, was also incurably insane.
Bibliography.—K. v. Heigel, Ludwig II. (1893); Luise v. Kobell, Unter den vier ersten Königen Bayerns (1894); C. Bujer, Ludwig II. (1897); Luise v. Kobell, “Wilhelm I. und Ludwig II.” Deutsche Revue, 22; Ludwig II. und die Kunst (1898); Ludwig II. und Bismarck (1870, 1899); Anonym, Endlich völlige Klarheit über den Tod des Königs Ludwig II. ... (1900); Freiherr v. Völderndorff, “Aus meiner Hofzeit,” in Velhagen und Klasings Monatshefte (1900); Francis Gerard, The Romance of Ludwig II. of Bavaria; J. Bainville, Louis II. de Bavière (Paris, 1900); E. v. Possart, Die Separatvorstellungen von König Ludwig II. (1901); O. Bray-Steinburg, Denkwürdigkeiten (1901); S. Röcke, Ludwig II. und Richard Wagner (1903); W. Busch, Die Kämpfe über Reichsverfassung und Kaisertum (1906); Chlodwig Hohenlohe, Denkwürdigkeiten (2 vols., 1907); A. v. Ruville, Bayern und die Wiederaufrichtung des Deutschen Reiches (1909); K. A. v. Müller, Bayern im Jahre 1866 und die Berufung des Fürsten Hohenlohe (1909); G. Kuntzel, Bismarck und Bayern in der Zeit der Reichsgründung (1910); Hesselbarth, Die Enstehung des deutsch-framözischen Krieges (1910); W. Strohmayer, “Die Ahnentafel Ludwigs II. und Ottos I.,” Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, vol. vii. (1910). (J. Hn.)
LOUIS II.[2] (846–879), king of France, called “le Bègue” or
“the Stammerer,” was a son of Charles II. the Bald, Roman
emperor and king of the West Franks, and was born on the 1st
of November 846. After the death of his elder brother Charles
in 866 he became king of Aquitaine, and in October 877 he
succeeded his father as king of the West Franks, but not as
emperor. Having made extensive concessions to the nobles
both clerical and lay, he was crowned king by Hincmar, archbishop
of Reims, on the 8th of December following, and in
September 878 he took advantage of the presence of Pope
John VIII. at the council of Troyes to be consecrated afresh.
After a feeble and ineffectual reign of eighteen months Louis
died at Compiègne on the 10th or 11th of April 879. The king
is described as “un homme simple et doux, aimant la paix, la
justice et la religion.” By his first wife, Ansgarde, a Burgundian
princess, he had two sons, his successors, Louis III. and Carloman;
by his second wife, Adelaide, he had a posthumous son, Charles
the Simple, who also became king of France.
(A. W. H.*)
LOUIS III. (c. 863–882), king of France, was a son of Louis
II. and with his brother Carloman succeeded his father as king
in April 879. A strong party, however, cast some doubts upon
the legitimacy of the young princes, as the marriage of their
parents had not been recognized by the emperor Charles the
Bald; consequently it was proposed to offer the crown to the
East Frankish ruler Louis, a son of Louis the German. But this
plan came to nothing, and in September 879 the brothers were
crowned at Ferrières by Ansègisus, archbishop of Sens. A few
months later they divided their kingdom, Louis receiving the
part of France north of the Loire. They acted together against
the Northmen, over whom in August 881 they gained a memorable
victory. They also turned against Boso who had been set up
as king in Burgundy and Provence. On the 5th of August
882 Louis died at St Denis. He left no sons and Carloman became sole king.
(A. W. H.*)
LOUIS IV. (921–954), king of France, surnamed “d’Outremer”
(Transmarinus), was the son of Charles III. the Simple. In
consequence of the imprisonment of his father in 922, his mother
Odgiva (Eadgyfu), sister of the English king Æthelstan, fled
to England with the young Louis—a circumstance to which
he owes his surname. On the death of the usurper Rudolph
(Raoul), Ralph of Burgundy, Hugh the Great, count of Paris,
and the other nobles between whom France was divided, chose
Louis for their king, and the lad was brought over from England
and consecrated at Laon on the 19th of June 936. Although
his de facto sovereignty was confined to the town of Laon and
to some places in the north of France, Louis displayed a zeal
beyond his years in procuring the recognition of his authority
by his turbulent vassals. The beginning of his reign was marked
by a disastrous irruption of the Hungarians into Burgundy
and Aquitaine (937). In 939 Louis became involved in a struggle
with the emperor Otto the Great on the question of Lorraine,
the nobles of which district had sworn an oath of fidelity to the
king of France. When Louis married Gerberga, sister of Otto,
and widow of Giselbert, duke of Lorraine, there seemed to be a
