Unhappily all these dispositions proved futile. The year 810, in which Godofrid of Denmark died, and also Haroun’s elephant Abu-l-Abbas, was in other ways a sore year for Charles. On 6th June his eldest daughter Hrotrud, once the affianced bride of the Eastern Cæsar, died, unmarried but leaving an illegitimate son, Louis, who afterwards became Abbot of St. Denis. Ere Charles had time to recover from this blow came the tidings that Pippin, the young King of Italy, had died on 8th July, possibly (but this is only a conjecture) of some malady contracted during his campaign of many months among the lagunes of Venice. So, though Pippin left a son, the lad Bernhard, who, if things went well with him, might hope to inherit his father’s kingdom, already a breach was made in Charles’s arrangements for the succession to his dominions. But a yet heavier blow fell upon him next year (4th December, 811), when his eldest son Charles, that one of all his children who most resembled him in aptitude for war and government, in strength of body and manly beauty, was torn from him by death. Now, of all his sons, there was only left that pathetically devout and incapable figure who is known to posterity as Louis the Pious or Louis the Debonnair, but whose piety and whose good nature were alike to prove disastrous when he should be called upon to guide with his nerveless hands the fiery steeds which had drawn his father’s car of empire.[70] However, there was no other heir available. In September, 813, a _generalis conventus_ was held at Aachen, at which, after taking the advice of his nobles, Charles placed the imperial crown on the head of Louis, and ordered him to be called Imperator and Augustus, thereby designating him as his successor, but not, as it should seem, admitting him to a present participation in his power. With that keen insight into character which Charles undoubtedly possessed, he must have perceived the weakness of his son’s disposition, and fears for the future of the empire which he had built up with so much toil and difficulty probably saddened his last days.