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The Carolingian Empire

Charles' Successors: Louis the Pious

Charles had only one son who survived him: Louis, whose patronage of the Church earned him the nickname of Pious. Louis was a good king but an unremarkable one. His principal accomplishment was to preserve and further his father's accomplishments, and to have a long life in his turn.

Louis had three sons. His settlement of their estates demonstrates how far the Franks still had to go in political understanding, for he divided the Frankish empire among the three of them, splitting what his forefathers had brought together with so much toil.

The division of the empire made perfect sense to the Franks. The titles, privileges and lands of Louis belonged to him, not to some abstraction known as the State. They were his in the same sense as were his hounds and horses. Wanting to provide properly for his three boys, he divided the titles and lands and privileges, as indeed Charlemagne would have done had his son Pepin survived.

Louis' son Charles got the western portion of the empire and ruled the Franks. Louis' son Louis got Germany. Lothar got Italy and a strip of territories between Germany and France. All three were unhappy with the arrangements and went to war after Louis' death. in 849, at Verdun, the three agreed on the final arrangements, which weren't much different from what I've just described.

Look at a map of Europe today. There is France to the west, and Germany to the east. Between them you can still find the fragments of Lothar's kingdom, the Middle Kingdom: Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland. The divisions made at Verdun would persist for over a thousand years.