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Everything, in fact, was ready for this great enterprise: the regent of Spain, Mary Anne of Austria, a feeble creature, under the thumb of one Father Nithard, a Jesuit, had allowed herself to be sent to sleep by the skilful manoeuvres of the Archbishop of Embrun; she had refused to make a treaty of alliance with England and to recognize Portugal, to which Louis XIV. had just given a French queen, by marrying Mdlle. de Nemours to King Alphonso VI. The league of the Rhine secured to him the neutrality, at the least, of Germany; the emperor was not prepared for war; Europe, divided between fear and favor, saw with astonishment Louis XIV. take the field in the month of May, 1667.

"A place of meeting was fixed," says the contemporary historian Nithard, "at a spot suitable for this kind of exercises. Here were drawn up, on one side, a certain number of combatants, Saxons, Vasconians, Austrasians, or Britons; there were ranged, on the opposite side, an equal number of warriors, and the two divisions advanced, each against the other, as if to attack.

But the opposition grew, and finally, after some ill-timed measures of Nithard, there was open revolt, and Don Juan appeared at the head of a body of troops to demand in the name of outraged Spain the immediate dismissal of the queen's favorite.

Knight Nithard assigned his estate to the cloister, and from that time forth many pilgrims journeyed to Prüm to see the arrow which had been carried there by angel hands. The storms of many centuries have blown over those hallowed walls, but the pictures in the old church belonging to the abbey still remain, thus preserving the legend from oblivion. The Building of the Minster

Upon her husband's death, she promptly installed her German confessor, Nithard, as inquisitor-general, gave him a place in the Council of State, and in all things made him her personal representative.

"A place of meeting was fixed," says the contemporary historian Nithard, "at a spot suitable for this kind of exercises. Here were drawn up, on one side, a certain number of combatants, Saxons, Vasconians, Austrasians, or Britons; there were ranged, on the opposite side, an equal number of warriors, and the two divisions advanced, each against the other, as if to attack.

The knight is Nithard, noble lord of Guise, who lived in the north of France towards the end of the ninth century. No children having been born to his excellent wife Erkanfrida, the knight determined to leave his estate for some pious object. He meant to endow a cloister, where after their deaths, masses would be read for him and his spouse.

Although he was the father of two children by Charlemagne's daughter, Bertha, one of them named Nithard, we have no authentic account of his marriage, and from 790 he was abbot of St. Riquier, where his brilliant rule gained for him later the renown of a saint.

The position of the young king Charles appeared for some time a very bad one; but "certain chieftains," says the historian Nithard, "faithful to his mother and to him, and having nothing more to lose than life or limb, chose rather to die gloriously than to betray their King."

The position of the young King Charles appeared for some time a very bad one; but "certain chieftains," says the historian Nithard, "faithful to his mother and to him, and having nothing more to lose than life or limb, chose rather to die gloriously than to betray their king."