“ CHARLES II. [1] called The Bald (823–877) , Roman emperor and king of the West Franks, was the son of the emperor Louis the Pious and of his second wife Judith and was born in 823. The attempts made by his father to assign him a kingdom, first Alamannia (829) , then the country between the Meuse and the Pyrenees (839) , at the expense of his half-brothers Lothair and Louis led to a rising on the part of these two (see Louis I., the Pious) . ”

“ The general tendency seems to have been to accept too easily the accounts of the chroniclers of the east Frankish kingdom, which are favourable to Louis the German, and to accuse Charles of cowardice and bad faith. He seems on the contrary not to have lacked activity or decision. ”