LOUGHREA  , a

market town of Co . Galway, Ireland, pleasantly situated on the N. shore of Lough Rea, 116 m . W. from Dublin by a branch from Attymon Junction on the Midland Great Western railway . Pop . (Igor), 2815 . There are slight remains of an Early English Carmelite friary dating c . 1300, which escaped the Dissolution . Loughrea is the seat of the Roman Catholic bishop of Clonfert, and has a cathedral built in 1900-1905 . A part of the castle of Richard de Burgh, the founder of the friary, still survives, and there are traces of the town fortifications . In the neighbourhood are a cromlech and two ruined towers, and crannogs, or ancient stockaded islands, have been discovered in the lough . Apart from the surroundings of the lough, the neighbouring country is peculiarly desolate . as her favourite at court .

Lothair and his brother Pippin joined the rebels, and after Judith had been sent into a convent and Bernard had fled to Spain, an assembly was held at Compiegne, when Louis was practically deposed and Lothair became the real ruler of the Empire . Sympathy was, however, soon aroused for the emperor, who was treated as a prisoner, and a second assembly was held at Nimwegen in October 83o when, with the concurrence of his sons Pippin and Louis, he was restored to power and Judith returned to court . Further trouble between Pippin and his father led to the nominal transfer of Aquitaine from Pippin to his brother Charles in 831 . The emperor's plans for a division of his dominions then led to a revolt of his three sons . Louis met them in June 833 near Kolmar, but owing possibly to the influence of Pope Gregory IV., who took part in the negotiations, he found himself deserted by his supporters, and the treachery and falsehood which marked the proceedings gave to the place the name of Lugenfeld, or the " field of lies." Judith, charged with infidelity, was again banished; Louis was sent into the monastery of St Medard at Soissons; and the government of the Empire was assumed by his sons . The emperor was forced to confess his sins, and declare himself unworthy of the throne, but Lothair did not succeed in his efforts to make his father a monk . Sympathy was again felt for Louis, and when the younger Louis had failed to induce Lothair to treat the emperor in a more becoming fashion, he and Pippin took up arms on behalf of their father . The result was that in March 834 Louis was restored to power at St Denis; Judith once more returned to his side and the kingdoms of Louis and Pippin were increased . The struggle with Lothair continued until the autumn, when he submitted to the emperor and was confined to Italy . To make the restoration more complete, a great assembly at Diedenhofen declared the deposition of Louis to have been contrary to law, and a few days later he was publicly restored in the cathedral of Metz . In December 838 Pippin died, and a new arrangement was made by which the Empire, except Bavaria, the kingdom of Louis, was divided between Lothair, now reconciled to his father, and Charles . The emperor was returning from suppressing a revolt on the part of his son Louis, provoked by this disposition, when he died on the loth of June 84o on an island in the Rhine near Ingelheim .

He was buried in the

church of St Arnulf at Metz . Louis was a man of strong frame, who loved the chase, and did not shrink from the hardships of war . He was, however, easily influenced and was unequal to the government of the Empire bequeathed to him by his father . No sustained effort was made to ward off the inroads of the Danes and others, who were constantly attacking the borders of the Empire . Louis, who is also called Le Debonnaire, counts as Louis I., king of France . See Annales Fuldenses; Annales Bertiniani; Thegan, Vita Hludowici; the Vita Hludowici attributed to Astronomus; Ermoldus• Nigellus, In honorem Hludowici imperatoris; Nithard, Historiarum libri, all in the Monumenta Germaniae historica . Scriptores, Bande i. and ii . (Hanover and Berlin, 1826 fol.); E . Miihlbacher, Die Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter den Karolingern (Innsbruck, 1881) ; and Deutsche Geschichte unter den Karolingern (Stuttgart, 1886) ; B . Simson, Jahrbi Cher des frankischen Reichs unter Ludwig dem Frommen (Leipzig, 1874—1876) ; and E . Dummler, Geschichte des ostfrankischen Reiches (Leipzig, 1887-1888) . (A .

W .