The Northmen were the greatest but not the only one of Charles’ troubles; the Breton Noménoë repelled all his attacks, crowned himself king, and left the title to his son Hérispoë. The Aquitanians elected as leader the son of their late king, Pepin II, whom Charles the Bald had deposed. Driven out on account of his vices, Pepin allied himself with the Northmen and Saracens to pillage his former subjects, but he was captured and shut up in a cloister. Charles recovered, for the time, Aquitaine, lost it, recovered it again and gave it to one of his sons. But the true masters of the country were Raymond, count of Toulouse, who also ruled over Rouergue and Quercy; Walgrin, count of Angoulême; Sancho Mitara, duke of Gascony, whose capital was Bordeaux; Bernhard, marquis of Septimania; Rainulf, duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitiers; Bernard Plantevelue, count of Auvergne; all of whom founded hereditary houses. To the north of the Loire, Charles had been constrained in the same way to constitute, for Robert the Strong, the grand duchy of France, from which sprang the third line of kings. North of the Somme it had been the same thing with the county of Flanders, given to the king’s son-in-law, Baldwin Bras de Fer (Iron Arm), and between the Loire and Saône, the powerful duchy of Burgundy for Richard the Judge. Thus under Charlemagne’s grandson not only was the empire divided into kingdoms, but the kingdoms themselves were dismembered into fiefs.[1] EDICTS OF PISTES AND QUIERZY Charles made, however, more and more the effort to retain in his service and that of the state the class of freedmen. In 863, the Edict of Pistes ordered a census of the men bound to military duty. The most severe penalties were pronounced against those who deprived these men of their horses and their arms, and also against the artful ones who sought to avoid military duty by giving themselves to the church. This prince, so weak at home, wished nevertheless to aggrandise himself abroad. The king who could not wear his own crown undertook to acquire others. At the death of the emperor Lothair, in 855, the inheritance was shared between his three sons. The eldest took Italy, the second Lorraine, and the third Provence. The last only lived until 863, and the king of Lorraine until 869, and neither had any children. Charles the Bald tried, on their death, to lay hands on their dominions. His plans miscarried in 863, but succeeded in 870, when he shared Lorraine with his brother, Louis the German. In spite of the weakness and dishonour of his reign, Charles the Bald brought together again, at least on one side, the France which the Treaty of Verdun had broken up.