CHARLES IL, known as Charles le Gros, or the Fat, was the son of Louis le Germanique, and by consequence nephew of Charles le Chauve. He was born about 832, and, upon the death of his father in 876, had inherited a portion of his dominions, which was designated the kingdom of Suable, and included Suabia, Switzerland, and Alsace. By the death of is brother Carloman in 880, he acquired the kingdom of Italy, and was crowned at Rome, by the pope, emperor of the West, about the end of the same year or the beginning of the next. In 882 he obtained the kingdom of Saxony by the death of his other brother, Louis of Saxony, and tho crown of France by the death of Carloman in 884. He thus reunited under one sceptre the dominions of Charle magne, with the exception of that part of Spain which lies between the Pyrenees and the Ebro, and the country between the Rhone and the Alps, which had been formed into a kingdom by the successful ambition of Boson, and perhaps Bretagne and Gascogue. Charles however showed an utter incapacity of governing the extensive domi niece thus acquired. The Northmen ravaged his coasts; one of their chieftains, Godfrid, who had previously extorted from cowardice of the empire the sovereignty of Friedland, began to stir again ; and 'fugues, whom the church stigmatised as illegitimate, son of Lothalre II., desolated Lorraine, which he claimed as his inheritance.
Charles determined to remove by treachery those whom be dared not face in battle; and at a conference appointed by him, Godfrid was assassinated, and Hugues made prisoner, deprived of his eyes, and shut up in a convent.
In 835-86, Paris was besieged by the Northmen, and bravely defended for more than a year by Eudes, count of Paris, eon of Robert lo Fort, count of Anjou and duke of France, and two ecclesiastics, and it was not until it was reduced to the last extremity that Charles advanced to its relief. He entered Paris with his army, but not venturing to encounter the Northmen, who bad concentrated their forces, he signed a treaty, by virtue of which he paid to the barbarians a consider able sum, to engage them to quit the environs of Paris and transfer the war more into the interior of France, to a country as yet little injured.
The charge which he made in 887 against his chancellor Liutward, bishop of Vercelli. tended by its consequences to increase the contempt into which Charles had fallen, and he was compelled to resign the imperial crown to his nephew Arnolph, an illegitimate eon of Karlo mann, king of Bavaria and Italy. Ha survived his deposition only a few weeks, dying early in the year 888 at a castle named Indinga, in Suabia.