prey to the enemy. Lothaire entered the city without a blow, plundered
it as if he had taken it by storm, and ordered that the imperial eagle,
which was erected in the grand square of Charles the Great, should have
its beak turned westward, in token that Lorraine now belonged to France.

Doubtless the great eagle turned creakingly on its support, thus moved
by the hand of unkingly perfidy, and impatiently awaited for time and
the tide of affairs to turn its beak again to the east. It had not long
to wait. The fugitive emperor hastily called a diet of the princes and
nobles at Dortmund, told them in impassioned eloquence of the faithless
act of the French king, and called upon them for aid against the
treacherous Lothaire. Little appeal was needed. The honor of Germany was
concerned. Setting aside all the petty 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