In June 833, at a meeting in Rothfield, in the Alsace, Louis was confronted by his eldest son, Lothar, who had proven himself an attentive student of Carolingian family history, and persuaded Pope Gregory IV to back him as supreme ruler. Lothar’s play for power spooked Louis’s supporters, and almost to a man they abandoned him for his eldest son: an act of collective spinelessness that earned the meeting the nickname the Field of Lies.
