My research project, Lost Cause: Forgetting, Remembering, and Stealing Nithard’s Historiae, uncovers the history of a very special book preserving the Latin chronicle by the ninth-century lay author and grandson of Charlemagne, Nithard, who happened to include in his text the earliest extant appearance of the French language. The study demonstrates that the movements of the lone manuscript long preserving this singular record of French (the “Strasbourg Oaths” of 842) provide an exceptionally favorable index by which to discern, track, and evaluate changes in attitudes about language, history, and identity over the course of a millennium. Insertions of marginalia, rebinding with additional folios bearing other works, and rebinding after the violent removal of those same folios, all point to the apathies and intrigues, movements and dramas of the manuscript’s storied past. What quickly emerges is that the times and places that Nithard’s work was especially valued were precisely those times and places largely characterized by division and war. The sad irony is that Nithard had written his provocatively patriotic text in the interest of unity and peace.