What the pope did we know not; but the same night on which he took leave of the emperor, the troops of the latter disbanded themselves. This desertion dissolved Louis’s army, and doubled that of his opponents: compelled to give himself up to his sons, he was dethroned, _by the advice of the pope_, says Fleury;⁸⁰ and Gregory returned to Rome, very much afflicted, according to the same historian, at the triumph of the unnatural children whom he had served. The plain where he had negociated, between Strasburg and Basle, is called to this day the ‘Field of falsehood.’ It would be too painful to retrace here the details so well known of the humiliations of Louis I.; how Ebbon, his creature⁸¹ and other bishops, condemned him to a public penance; how the son of Charlemagne shewed himself almost worthy of the infamy by his submission; how, on his knees before these prelates, he publicly recited a confession of his crimes, in the number of which they had inserted the marching of his troops during Lent, and the convocation of a parliament on Holy Thursday; how, dragged from cloister to cloister, to Compagne, to Soissons, to Aix-la-Chapelle, to Paris, to St. Denis, he seemed destined to terminate his days there, when the excess of his misfortunes provoked the public pity, and produced against his already divided enemies the indignation of the nobles and of the people. The great lords came to offer him homage as their sovereign, but Louis dared not recognize himself such until he was canonically absolved: he did not resume, he said, the belt, but in virtue of the judgment and authority of the bishops. ⁸⁰ Hist. Eccles. 1.47. n.39. ⁸¹ Ebbon a contemporary historian thus speaks of it: Elegerunt tunc unum impudicum et crudelissimum, qui dice* batur Hebo, Rexnansis episcopug; qui erat ex originalium servorum stirpe......Abstulerunt ei gladium de femore suo, judicio servorum suorum, induentes cum cilicio. Tunc im-pletum est eloquium Jeremiæ prophet dicentis: Servi domi-nati sunt nostri. O qualem remuneratkmem reddidisti ei! Fecit te liberum, non nobilem, quod impossibile est post liber-tatem: vestivit te purpurio et pallio, tu induisti cum cilicio. Hie pertraxit te immeritum ad culipen pontificate, tu cum falso judicio voluigti expellere à solio patrum suorum....Patres tui fuerunt pastores caprarum, non copsiliarii principum, &c. Thegon. de gettis budov. Pit tom. 45.