History of the Kingdom of East Francia: The Treaty of Verdun and the Formation of the Kingdom.

Tags

Charlemagne, Charles the Bald, Emperor of the Romans, Holy Roman Empire, King of Middle Francia, King of West Francia, Kingdom of East Francia, Lothair I, Louis the Pious, Pepin of Aquitaine, Treaty of Verdun

Ludwig the Pious (April 16, 778 – June 20, 840) was King of the Franks and co-emperor with his father, Charlemagne, from 813. He was also King of Aquitaine from 781. As the only surviving son of Charlemagne and Hildegard, he became the sole ruler of the Kingdom of the Franks and the Carolingian Empire after his father’s death in 814, a position that he held until his death except from 833 to 834, when he was deposed.

As emperor, he included his adult sons, Lothair, Pepin and Ludwig, in the government and sought to establish a suitable division of the realm among them. The first decade of his reign was characterised by several tragedies and embarrassments, notably the brutal treatment of his nephew Bernard of Italy for which Ludwig atoned in a public act of self-debasement.

In the 830s his empire was torn by civil war between his sons that was only exacerbated by Ludwig’s attempts to include his son Charles by his second wife in the succession plans.

Pepin I or Pepin I of Aquitaine was King of Aquitaine and Duke of Maine. He had rebelled against his brother Lothair and lost but was later restored to his throne shortly before his death on December 13, 838.

Ludwig the Pious, Emperor of the Romans, King of the Franks

Emperor Ludwig the Pious fell ill soon after his final victorious campaigns and retreated to his summer hunting lodge on an island in the Rhine near his palace at Ingelheim. He died on June 20, 840 in the presence of many bishops and clerics and in the arms of his half-brother Drogo as he pardoned his son Ludwig the German proclaimed Lothair Emperor and commended the absent Charles and Judith to his protection.

Though his reign ended on a high note, with order largely restored to his empire, shortly after his death dispute plunged the surviving brothers into yet another civil war. It lasted until 843 with the signing of the Treaty of Verdun.

The Treaty of Verdun agreed on in August 843, divided the Frankish Empire into three kingdoms among the surviving sons of the Emperor Ludwig the Pious, the son and successor of Charlemagne.

Charles the Bald, King of West Francia

The treaty was the first of the four partition treaties of the Carolingian Empire, followed by the Treaties of Prüm (855), Meerssen (870), and Ribemont (880).

Prior to the death of Emperor Ludwig the Pious, each of the three brothers was already established in one kingdom: Lothair in the Kingdom of Italy; Ludwig the German in the Kingdom of Bavaria; and Charles the Bald in the Kingdom of Aquitaine, (succeeding his half-brother Pepin) a large province in the west of the Frankish realm.

As mentioned above, Lothair I was given the title of Emperor after the death of Ludwig the Pious but because of several re-divisions by his father and the resulting revolts, he became much less powerful.

Lothair I, Emperor of the Romans, King of Middle Francia

In an attempt to reclaim the power his father had at the beginning of his reign as emperor, Lothair I, claimed overlordship over the entirety of his father’s kingdom and Empire.

Lothair also supported his nephew, Pepin II’s claim to the Kingdom of Aquitaine over his half-brother Charles the Bald. Lothair’s brother, Ludwig the German and his half-brother Charles the Bald refused to acknowledge Lothair’s suzerainty over them and declared war against him.

After a bloody civil war, the two brothers, Ludwig the German and Charles the Bald, defeated Lothair at the Battle of Fontenoy in 841 and sealed their alliance in 842 with the Oaths of Strasbourg which declared Lothair unfit for the imperial throne, after which he became willing to negotiate a settlement.

Peace negotiations began, and in June 842 the brothers met on an island in the Saône. They agreed to an arrangement which developed, after much difficulty and delay, into the Treaty of Verdun, signed in August 843.

Provisions

Emperor Lothair I received Middle Francia (the Middle Frankish kingdom). In the settlement, Lothair retained his title and position of Emperor, but it conferred only nominal overlordship of his brothers’ lands.

His domain later became the Low Countries, the Rhineland west of the Rhine, Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy, Provence, and the Kingdom of Italy (which only covered the northern half of the Italian Peninsula). He also received the two imperial cities, Aachen and Rome.

Charles II the Bald received West Francia; all lands west of the Rhône. It eventually became the Kingdom of France.

King Ludwig II the German received East Francia. He was guaranteed the kingship of all lands to the east of the Rhine (although not the Netherlands to the north of the Rhine) and to the north and east of Italy, altogether called East Francia. It eventually became the High Medieval Kingdom of Germany, the largest component of the Holy Roman Empire.

The brothers nephew, Pepin II, was granted the Kingdom of Aquitaine, but only under the authority of Charles the Bald.

Ludwig II the German, King of East Francia

After Lothair’s death in 855, his eldest son, Ludwig II the Younger inherited Italy and his father’s claim to the Imperial throne. Upper Burgundy and Lower Burgundy (Arles and Provence) passed to Lothair’s third son, Charles of Provence. The remaining territory north of the Alps, which did not previously have a name, was inherited by Lothair’s second son, Lothair II, and was then named Lotharingia (present day Lorraine) after him.

Ludwig II the Younger’s usual title was imperator augustus (“august emperor”), but he used imperator Romanorum (“emperor of the Romans”) after his conquest of Bari in 871, which led to poor relations with the Eastern Roman Empire. He was called imperator Italiae (“emperor of Italy”) in West Francia while the Byzantines called him Basileus Phrangias (“Emperor of Francia”).

With Ludwig II the German now established as King of East Francia, the new Kingdom consisted of a district around Speyer, Worms, and Mainz, on the left bank of the river (see also Oaths of Strasbourg 842). His territories included Bavaria (where he made Regensburg the centre of his government), Thuringia, Franconia, and Saxony.

In the next post I will continue the examination of how the Kingdom of East Francia became the Holy Roman Empire and the usage of the titles, King of East Francia, King of Germany and King of the Romans.

October 6, 877: Death of Charles the Bald, Carolingian Emperor, King of Italy and King of West Francia

Tags

Carolingian Emperor, Carolingian Empire, Charles the Bald, East Francia, Louis I the Pious, Treaty of Verdun, West Francia

Charles the Bald (June 13, 823 – October 6, 877), also known as Charles II, was a 9th-century King of West Francia (843–877), King of Italy (875–877) and Emperor of the Carolingian Empire (875–877). After a series of civil wars during the reign of his father, Louis the Pious, Charles succeeded, by the Treaty of Verdun (843), in acquiring the western third of the empire.

Charles was a grandson of Charlemagne and the youngest son of Louis I the Pious by his second wife, Judith, the daughter of Count Welf of Bavaria and Saxon noblewoman Hedwig. No surviving sources provide a record of Judith’s exact date and year of birth.

Charles was born on June 13, 823 in Frankfurt, when his elder brothers were already adults and had been assigned their own regna, or subkingdoms, by their father. The attempts made by Louis the Pious to assign Charles a subkingdom, first Alemannia (Germany) and then the country between the Meuse and the Pyrenees (in 832, after the rising of Pepin I of Aquitaine) were unsuccessful.

The numerous reconciliations with the rebellious Lothair and Pepin, as well as their brother Louis the German, King of Bavaria, made Charles’s share in Aquitaine and Italy only temporary, but his father did not give up and made Charles the heir of the entire land which was once Gaul.

At a diet in Aachen in 837, Louis the Pious bade the nobles do homage to Charles as his heir. Pepin of Aquitaine died in 838, whereupon Charles at last received that kingdom, which angered Pepin’s heirs and the Aquitainian nobles.

The death of the Emperor Louis I the Pious in 840 led to the outbreak of war between his sons. Charles allied himself with his brother Louis the German to resist the pretensions of the new Emperor Lothair I, and the two allies defeated Lothair at the Battle of Fontenoy-en-Puisaye on June 25, 841.

In the following year, the two brothers confirmed their alliance by the celebrated Oaths of Strasbourg. The war was brought to an end by the Treaty of Verdun in August 843. The settlement gave Charles the Bald the Kingdom of the West Franks (West Francia) which he had been up until then governing and which practically corresponded with what is now France, as far as the Meuse, the Saône, and the Rhône, with the addition of the Spanish March as far as the Ebro.

Louis the German received the eastern part of the Carolingian Empire, known then as East Francia and later as Germany. Lothair retained the imperial title and the Kingdom of Italy. He also received the central regions from Flanders through the Rhineland and Burgundy as king of Middle Francia.

Reign in the West

Shortly after Verdun, Charles went on to an unsuccessful campaign against Brittany, on the return from which he signed the Treaty of Coulaines with his nobility and clergy. After that, the first years of his reign, up to the death of Lothair I in 855, were comparatively peaceful.

In 858, Louis the German, invited by disaffected nobles eager to oust Charles, invaded the West Frankish kingdom. Charles was so unpopular that he was unable to summon an army, and he fled to Burgundy. He was saved only by the support of the bishops, who refused to crown Louis the German king, and by the fidelity of the Welfs, who were related to his mother, Judith.

In 860, he in his turn tried to seize the kingdom of his nephew, Charles of Provence, but was repulsed. On the death of his nephew Lothair II in 869, Charles tried to seize Lothair’s dominions by having himself consecrated as King of Lotharingia (Middle Francia) at Metz, but he was compelled to open negotiations when Louis found support among Lothair’s former vassals. Lotharingia was partitioned between Charles and Louis in the resulting treaty (870).

In 875, after the death of the Emperor Louis II (son of his half-brother Lothair), Charles the Bald, supported by Pope John VIII, traveled to Italy, receiving the royal crown at Pavia and the imperial insignia in Rome on December 25. As emperor, Charles combined the mottoes that had been used by his grandfather and father into a single formula: renovatio imperii Romani et Francorum, “renewal of the empire of the Romans and Franks”. These words appeared on his seal.

Louis the German, also a candidate for the succession of Louis II, revenged himself by invading and devastating Charles’s domains, and Charles had to return hastily to West Francia. After the death of Louis the German (August 28, 876), Charles in his turn attempted to seize Louis’s kingdom, but was decisively beaten at the Battle of Andernach on October 8, 876.

In the meantime, Pope John VIII, menaced by the Saracens, was urging Charles to come to his defence in Italy. Charles again crossed the Alps, but this expedition was received with little enthusiasm by the nobles, and even by his regent in Lombardy, Boso, and they refused to join his army. At the same time Carloman, son of Louis the German, entered northern Italy. Charles, ill and in great distress, started on his way back to Gaul, but died while crossing the pass of Mont Cenis at Brides-les-Bains, on October 6, 877.

Burial and succession

According to the Annals of St-Bertin, Charles was hastily buried at the abbey of Nantua, Burgundy because the bearers were unable to withstand the stench of his decaying body. A few years later, his remains were transferred to the Abbey of Saint-Denis where he had long wished to be buried, in a porphyry tub which may be the same one known as “Dagobert’s tub” (cuve de Dagobert), now in the Louvre. It was recorded that there was a memorial brass there that was melted down at the Revolution.

Charles was succeeded by his son, Louis. Charles was a prince of education and letters, a friend of the church, and conscious of the support he could find in the episcopate against his unruly nobles, for he chose his councillors from among the higher clergy, as in the case of Guenelon of Sens, who betrayed him, and of Hincmar of Reims.

Baldness

It has been suggested that Charles’s nickname was used ironically and not descriptively; i.e. that he was not in fact bald, but rather that he was extremely hairy. An alternative or additional interpretation is based on Charles’s initial lack of a regnum. “Bald” would in this case be a tongue-in-cheek reference to his landlessness, at an age where his brothers already had been sub-kings for some years.

Contemporary depictions of his person, e.g., in his Bible of 845, on his seal of 847 (as king) as well as on his seal of 875 (as emperor) show him with a full head of hair, as does the equestrian statuette (c. 870) thought to depict him.

The Genealogy of Frankish Kings, a text from Fontanelle dating from possibly as early as 869, and a text without a trace of irony, names him as Karolus Calvus (“Charles the Bald”). Certainly, by the end of the 10th century, Richier of Reims and Adhemar of Chabannes refer to him in all seriousness as “Charles the Bald”.

Marriages

In 842 Charles married Ermentrude, daughter of Odo I, Count of Orléans and his wife Engeltrude de Fézensac.
She died in 869.

In 870, Charles married Richilde of Provence, who was descended from a noble family of Lorraine.

With both wives Charles the Bald had many children.

Origins of the Holy Roman Empire. Part II.

Tags

Charlemagne, Charles the Bald, Charles the Great, Holy Roman Emperor, Holy Roman Empire, King of the Lombards, Kingdom of East Francia, Kingdom of Lotharingia, Kingdom of West Francia, Lothair, Louis the Pious, Treaty of Verdun

Scholars generally concur, however, in relating an evolutionary process to the institutions and principles eventualy forming and constituting the empire, describing it as a gradual assumption of the imperial title and role of the emperor and the empire itself over the lands under its authority.

Let us delve deeper into the creation of the empire. First some background information leading to the rule of Charlemagne.

From the time of Roman Emperor Constantine I (r. 306–337), the Roman emperors had, with very few exceptions, taken on a role as promoters and defenders of Christianity. The reign of Constantine established a precedent for the position of the Christian emperor in the Church.

Roman Emperors considered themselves responsible to the gods for the spiritual health of their subjects, and after Constantine and his conversation to Christianity, the Emperors believed they had a duty to help the Church define and maintain orthodoxy. The emperor’s role was to enforce doctrine, root out heresy, and uphold ecclesiastical unity.

Both the title and connection between Emperor and Church continued in the Eastern Roman Empire throughout the medieval period (in exile during 1204–1261). The ecumenical councils of the 5th to 8th centuries were convoked by the Eastern Roman Emperors.

In Western Europe, the title of Emperor in the West lapsed after the death of Julius Nepos in 480, although the rulers of the barbarian kingdoms continued to recognize the authority of the Eastern Emperor, at least nominally, well into the 6th century.

While the reconquest of Justinian I had reestablished Byzantine presence in Italy, religious frictions existed with the Papacy who sought dominance over the Constantinople Church.

Toward the end of the 8th century the Papacy still recognised the ruler at Constantinople as the Roman Emperor, though Byzantine military support in Italy had increasingly waned, leading to the Papacy to look to the Franks and thier King for protection.

Charlemagne was the eldest son of Pepin I the Short, King of the Franks, and Bertrada of Laon, born before their canonical marriage. Charlemagne became king of the Franks in 768 following his father’s death, initially as co-ruler with his brother Carloman I, until the latter’s death in 771. As sole ruler, he continued his father’s policy towards the papacy and became its protector. He became King of the Lombards in 774, removing them from power in northern Italy and leading an incursion into Muslim Spain. He campaigned against the Saxons to his east, Christianising them upon penalty of death, leading to events such as the Massacre of Verden.

The Massacre of Verden was an event during the Saxon Wars where Charlemagne ordered the death of 4,500 Saxons in October 782. Charlemagne claimed suzerainty over Saxony and in 772 destroyed the Irminsul, an important object in Saxon paganism, during his intermittent thirty-year campaign to Christianize the Saxons. The massacre occurred in Verden in what is now Lower Saxony, Germany. The event is attested in contemporary Frankish sources, including the Royal Frankish Annals.

In 799, Pope Leo III had been assaulted by some of the Romans, who tried to put out his eyes and tear out his tongue. His enemies had accused Leo III of adultery and perjury. Leo escaped and fled to Charlemagne at Paderborn. Charlemagne ordered the Pope’s accusers to Paderborn, but no decision could be made. Charlemagne then had Leo escorted back to Rome. In November 800, Charlemagne, advised by scholar Alcuin, travelled to Rome, and on December 1 held a council there with representatives of both sides of the dispute. Leo III, on December 23, took an oath of purgation concerning the charges brought against him, and his opponents were exiled.

At Mass, on Christmas Day (December 25), when Charlemagne knelt at the altar to pray, the Pope crowned him Imperator Romanorum (“Emperor of the Romans”) in Saint Peter’s Basilica. In so doing, the Pope rejected the legitimacy of Roman Empress Irene of Constantinople.

By this time, the Eastern Emperor Constantine VI has been deposed in 797 and replaced as monarch by his mother, Irene. Under the pretext that a women cannot rule the empire, Pope Leo III declared the throne vacant and was used to justify crowning Charlemagne Emperor of the Romans (Imperator Romanorum), the successor of Constantine VI as Roman emperor under the concept of translatio imperii.

On his coins, the name and title used by Charlemagne is Karolus Imperator Augustus and in his documents, he used Imperator Augustus Romanum gubernans Imperium (“August Emperor, governing the Roman Empire”) and serenissimus Augustus a Deo coronatus, magnus pacificus Imperator Romanorum gubernans Imperium (“most serene Augustus crowned by God, great peaceful emperor governing the empire of the Romans”).

The Eastern Empire eventually relented to recognizing Charlemagne and his successors as emperors, but as “Frankish” and “German emperors”, and at no point did the Eastern or Byzantine Emperors referred to thier Western counterparts as Roman Emperors, a label they reserved for themselves.

Incidentally, the name, Byzantine Empire is a more a creation of modern historiography because the Eastern Emperor’s and it’s citizens and subject, simply refered to the Emperor as the Roman Emperor and themselves as citizens and subjects of the Roman Empire.

Charlemagne has been called the “Father of Europe” (Pater Europae), as he united most of Western Europe for the first time since the classical era of the Roman Empire and united parts of Europe that had never been under Frankish or Roman rule. His rule spurred the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of energetic cultural and intellectual activity within the Western Church.

The Empire that began with Charlemagne was inherited in tact by his son, known as Louis I Pious. After a civil war (840–843) following the death of Emperor Louis the Pious, his sons divided the Empire after the signing of the Treaty of Verdun. The Empire was divided into three autonomous kingdoms:

Lothair I received Middle Francia, the central portion of the empire, this region was eventually called the first state of Lotharingia. In the settlement, Lothair (who had been named co-emperor in 817) retained his title as emperor, but it conferred only nominal overlordship of his brothers’ lands. Later his domain became the Low Countries, Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy, Provence, and the Kingdom of Italy (which covered the northern half of the Italian Peninsula). He also received the two imperial cities, Aachen and Rome.

Louis II, called the German, received the East Francia portion of the empire. He was guaranteed the kingship of all lands to the east of the Rhine (although not the Netherlands to the north of the Rhine) and to the north and east of Italy, plus the Rhineland west of the Rhine. All this land compiled the Kingdom of East Francia. It eventually became the High Medieval Kingdom of Germany, the largest component of the Holy Roman Empire.

Charles the Bald received the portion of the empire, all lands west of the Rhône, called West Francia. The Kingdom of West Francia later evolved to become the Kingdom of France.

The fourth son of Louis the Pious, Pepin II, was granted the Kingdom of Aquitaine, but only under the authority of his brother Charles the Bald.

With one king still recognised as emperor, Lothair I, but with little authority outside his own kingdom, the position and title of Emperor became considerably weakened. However, the unity of the empire and the hereditary right of the Carolingians continued to be acknowledged.

In 884, Charles II the Fat reunited all the Carolingian kingdoms for the last time, but he died in 888 and the empire immediately split up. With the only remaining legitimate male of the dynasty a child, Louis the Child, the nobility elected regional kings from outside the dynasty or, in the case of the eastern kingdom, an illegitimate Carolingian. The illegitimate line continued to rule in the east until 911. As mentioned previously, the Carolingian Empire came to its end with the death of the last Italian claimant, Berengar I, in 924.

On this date in History: July 2, 936. Death of Heinrich The Fowler, King of East Francia and German History Part I.

Tags

Duke of Saxony, Henry the Fowler, Holy Roman Emperor, Holy Roman Empire, Kingdom of East Francia, Kingdom of Germany, Kingdom of Lothringia, Kingdom of West Francia, Otto the Great, Treaty of Verdun

Heinrich The Fowler (876 – July 2, 936) was the duke of Saxony from 912 and the elected king of East Francia (Germany) from 919 until his death in 936. As the first non-Frankish king, he established the Ottonian Dynasty of kings and emperors, and he is generally considered to be the founder and first king of the medieval German state, known until then as East Francia. An avid hunter, he obtained the epithet “the Fowler” because he was allegedly fixing his birding nets when messengers arrived to inform him that he was to be king.

Born in Memleben, in what is now Saxony-Anhalt, Heinrich was the son of Otto the Illustrious, Duke of Saxony, and his wife Hedwiga, daughter of Heinrich of Franconia and Ingeltrude and a great-great-granddaughter of Charlemagne. In 906 Heinrich married Hatheburg of Merseburg, daughter of the Saxon count Erwin. She had previously been a nun.

Heinrich I The Fowler King of East Francia

The marriage was annulled in 909 because her vows as a nun were deemed by the church to remain valid. She had already given birth to Henry’s son Thankmar. The annulment placed a question mark over Thankmar’s legitimacy. Later that year he married Matilda, daughter of Dietrich of Ringelheim, Count in Westphalia. Matilda bore him three sons, one called Otto, and two daughters, Hedwigand Gerberga, and founded many religious institutions, including the Quedlinburg Abbey where Henry is buried. She was later canonized.

Heinrich’s father, Otto I, Duke of Saxony died in 912 and was succeeded by Heinrich. The new duke launched a rebellion against the king of East Francia, Conrad I of Germany, over the rights to lands in the Duchy of Thuringia. They reconciled in 915 and on his deathbed in 918, Conrad recommended Henry as the next king, considering the duke the only one who could hold the kingdom together in the face of internal revolts and external Magyar raids.

Kingdoms of West Francia, Lothringia and East Francia

Henry was elected and crowned king in 919. He went on to defeat the rebellious dukes of Bavaria and Swabia, consolidating his rule. In 935 Heinrich planned an expedition to Rome to be crowned as Holy Roman Emperorby the Pope, but the design was thwarted by a hunting accident near the royal palace of Bodfeld in the autumn of 935 that severely injured him.

Heinrich prevented a collapse of royal power, as had happened in West Francia, and left a much stronger kingdom to his successor Otto I. Henry died of a stroke on July 2, 936 in his royal palace in Memleben, one of his favourite places. He was buried at Quedlinburg Abbey, established by his wife Matilda in his honor.

Flag of The Holy Roman Empire of German Nation.

German History can be confusing. Terms such as Kingdom of the Franks, Kingdoms of East and West Francia, Holy Roman Empire and the Kingdom of Germany and King of the Romans are often bantered about as if there is no difference between them. In the next coming weeks I will begin a series on German history to sort out all this confusion!

Who was the last King of the Franks? Who was the first King of France?

Tags

Austrasia, Charlemagne, Charles the Bald, Charles the Great, Clovis, Clovis I, Holy Roman Empire, Lothair I, Lothair II, Louis the german, Mayor of the Palace, Pippin the Younger, Pope Leo III, Roman Empire, Treaty of Verdun

I have touched on this before so I may be repeating some of myself here. The subject of France and the Kingdom of France/Kingdom of the Franks is complex and doesn’t fit into a tidy box of starts and stops as one may want it to. Just like we have a specific date for the founding of the Kingdom of Wessex in England, we have a specific date for the founding of the Kingdom of the Franks. And just like the transformation from the Kingdom of Wessex in to the Kingdom of England is open to interpretation, so is the transformation from the Kingdom of the Franks into the Kingdom of France. So who was the last King of the franks? Who was the first King of France?

Here is a little background information.

The Kingdom of the Franks or Frankish Kingdom (Latin: Regnum Francorum), Frankish Empire, Frankish Realm or occasionally Frankland, Francia or Frankia was a territory inhabited and ruled by the Franks, who were a coalition of Germanic tribes. The kingdom was founded by Clovis I, crowned first King of the Franks in 496. Clovis’ title in Latin was Francorum Rex. My intent is not to do a complete history of the Frankish Kingdom for this topic but I will summarize some important aspects.

At first the kingdom was small, the kingdom originally consisted of the area called Austrasia which was centered on the Middle Rhine and included the basins the Moselle, Main and Meuse rivers. It bordered on Frisia and Saxony to the north, Thuringia to the east, Swabia and Burgundy to the south and to Neustria and Flanders to the west. Under Charlemagne the territory of of the Frankish kingdom, or empire at this time, included all of modern France, the Low Countries, Germany and Northern Italy.

However, prior to Charlemagne unity of the Frankish Kingdom was not its trademark. The dynasty Clovis belonged to, the Merovingians, had the habit of dividing the kingdom among all the sons of the king. This mean Francia was often divided into sub-kingdoms such as the kingdom of Austrasia and Neustria for example. There were times when the kingdom was united but it was rare.

Eventually the Merovingians became weak monarchs and were supplanted by the Mayors of the Palace (often chief advisory to the king). In 751 Pippin the Younger, Mayor of the Palace, supplanted the Merovingians and became King of the Franks. This dynasty would become known as the Carolingians named after Pipin’s most famous son, Charles the Great, known to history as Charlemagne. Under Charlemagne the Kingdom of the Franks reached its zenith in both power and geographical extent. With Charlemagne’s support of the papacy in times of war and invasion, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne Emperor on Christmas Day, 800, with the notion he had restored the old Roman Empire in the West (topic of another blog post).

Charlemagne expressed his desire to separate and divide his kingdom among his three sons but with the death of all of them except Louis, the point was moot. Louis inherited the entire Frankish empire including the titles Francorum Rex and Imperator Romanorum “Emperor of the Romans.” It was Louis I called the Pious, who divided his empire in 840. However, civil war broke out among the three sons and it was with the Treaty of Verdun in 843 that settled the division.

These are the three divisions of the empire decided by the Treaty of Verdun in 843: East and West Francia and Middle Francia.

Middle Francia was the territory ruled by Lothair I, eldest son of Louis I, and the kingdom was wedged between East and West Francia. Lothair I took the Imperial title but only the ruled the Middle Frankish Kingdom. His three sons in turn divided this kingdom between them into Lotharingia (centered on Lorraine), Burgundy, and (Northern) Italy, known as Lombardy. These areas had different cultures, ethnicity, language and traditions which did not allow unity to take hold. This kingdom was would later vanish as separate kingdoms, (although Charles the Fat would briefly re-unite the entire Carolingian Empire in 888). Middle Francia would eventually become Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Lorraine, Switzerland, Lombardy and the various.

East Francia was the land of Louis II the German. It was divided into four duchies: Swabia (Alamannia), Franconia, Saxony and Bavaria; to which after the death of Lothair II were added the eastern parts of Lotharingia. This kingdom eventually evolved into the Holy Roman Empire which is slated for a future blog in this topic.

In wanting to keep these blogs readable, I don’t like to read through a lot of text online, and many also feel that way, I will conclude the section on France, next Friday. However, look for other blog posts during the week!