tty squabbles which rent the land,
the indignant princes gathered their forces and placed them under Otho's
command. By the 1st of October the late fugitive found himself at the
head of a considerable army, and prepared to take revenge on his
perfidious enemy.

Into France he marched, and made his way with little opposition, by
Rheims and Soissons, until the French capital lay before his eyes. Here
the army encamped on the right bank of the Seine, around Montmartre,
while their cavalry avenged the plundering of Aix-la-Chapelle by laying
waste the country for many miles around. The French were evidently as
little prepared for Otho's activity as he had been for Lothaire's
treachery, and did not venture beyond the walls of their city, leaving
the country a defenceless prey to the revengeful anger of the emperor.

The Seine lay between the two armies, but not a Frenchman ventured to
cross its waters; the garrison of the city, under Hugh Capet,--Count of
Paris, and soon to become the founder of a new dynasty of French
kings,--keeping closely within its walls. These walls proved too strong
for the Germans, and as winter was approaching, and there was much
sickness among his troops, the emperor retreated, after having
devastated all that region of France. But first he kept a vow that he
had made, that he would cause the Parisians to hear a _Te Deum_ such as
they had never heard before. In pursuance of this vow, he gathered upon
the hill of Montmartre all the clergymen whom he could seize, and forced
them to sing his anthem of victory with the full power of their lungs.
Then, having burned the suburbs of Paris, and left his lance quivering
in the city gate, he withdrew in triumph, having amply punished the
treacherous French king. Aix-la-Chapelle fell again into his hands; the
eyes of the imperial eagle were permitted once more to gaze upon
Germany, and in the treaty of peace that followed Lorraine was declared
to be forever a part of the German realm.

Two years afterwards Otho, infected by that desire to conquer Italy
which for centuries afterwards troubled the dreams of German emperors,
and brought them no end of trouble, crossed the Alps and descended upon
the Italian plains, from which he was never to return. Northern Italy
was already in German hands, but the Greeks held possessions in the
south which Otho claimed, in view of the fact that he had married
Theophania, the daughter of the Greek emperor at Constantinople. T