The Carolingian Dynasty (With Notes about the Queens and Empresses)

As Charlemagne is the best known of the Carolingian rulers, as far as the Carolingian Revival is concerned, his predecessors, like Charles 'The Hammer' worked the basis of it, by developing the power of the Franks in Europe, and his heirs continued Charlemagne's work. The Carolingian dynasty, until the Treaty of Verdun, in 843, is mostly in a direct line, as, further, it parts into diverging branches

Founders (c. 615-c. 662)
Carolingians Proper (c. 687-840)
The Treaty of Verdun (843)
West Francia Carolingians (843-987)
Middle Francia Carolingians (843-863)
East Francia Carolingians (843-911), and German Rulers (911-1002)
Notes about Aquitaine, Italy, etc.

Founders (c. 615-c. 662)

• Pepin of Landen (or Peppin, Pipin, or Pippin, the Elder or the Old) (c. 580-2/27/639): he was mayor of the palace of Austrasia, beginnin in 615. He married Itta de Nivelles (or Ida, Iduberga; she was originating from Aquitaine and was the sister of the bishop of Trier; this marriage allowed Pepin to considerably increase his wealth). Pepin's daughter, Begga, as she married Ansegisel, son of Arnulf of Metz, the bishop of Metz, the ecclesiastical counterpart of Pepin of Landen, is at the origin of the Carolingian dynasty)
• Grimoald I (or Grimoald I the Elder) (616-c. 662): the younger son of Pepin of Landen, he eventually became mayor of the palace of Austrasia, like his father, but he further schemed that his son, Childebert, succeeds, in 651, to the Merovingian king Sigebert, as he exiles the legitimate Merovingian heir, Dagobert II, in England. Both the father and son are eliminated by Clovis II's Neustrians because the mayor of the palace of Neustria had views upon Austrasia

Carolingians Proper (c. 687-840)

• Pepin of Herstal (or Pippin, Pipin, Peppin, Pippin the Middle) (c. 653-12/16/714): likely born in Herstal, he was the son of Begga and Ansegisel. He leads the magnates of Austrasia against the mayors of the palace of Neustria, who are fighting against the ones of Burgundy (in the person of St. Léger) and he eventually wins over them at the battle of Tertry, in 687 (Pepin had a brother, Martin, who died during this battle). As soon as 679, there was no king anymore in Austrasia, as the Greats there had refused that the king of Neustria inherits Austrasia. Thence, he become the mayor of the palace for all the three kingdoms of Neustria, Burgunday and Austrasia, the whole of the Frankish dominions that is, imposing the Frankish rule to the Alamans, the Frisians, and Franconians as he helps for the first missionarizing missions in Germania. As he married Plectrude, a rich Austrasian, aristocratic heir, who had a vast number of properties in the neighbourhoods of Cologne and Trêves, he increased his own wealth. He is the fist mayor of the palace to bear the title of "duke and prince of the Franks", such a title hinting to the increase in power of this function. He however let the legitimate Merovingian sovereigns to reign, albeit most of them were minors, the regency for who he assumed. He respectively names his both sons, Drogo and Grimoald, like mayors of the palace in Burgundy and Neustria. Both die before he does. He married Plectrude, who originated from a powerful lineage of between Cologne and Trier (he had from her Drogo and Grimoald), and then Alpaida (she had been his concubine; he had from her Charles 'The Hammer' and Childebrand -the latter at the origin of a lesser branch of the Carolingians, the Nibelungids
• Charles 'The Hammer' (c. 688, in Herstal-10/21 or 22/741, in Quierzy-sur-Oise): Charles 'The Hammer' definitively established the power of the fledgling Carolingians. He is one of the illegitimate sons of Pepin of Herstal and Alpaida, a concubine. Plectrude, like the legitimate widow of Pepin, convinced Pepin, few before he died, that it be Theudoald, his grandson, son of Grimoald, who be his successor, to the detriment of Charles and Childebrand. Charles however had the support of the Greats of Austrasia due to his military capacities -thus he had the ability to increase their wealth in terms of domains. Charles, thus, retakes the power, he wins over Neustria (which had become hostile again; Grimoald, the son to Pippin II, had been assassinated by a rebelled Frisian and he had been replaced by his son, a minor, Thibaud. The Neustrians took the opportunity of the velleities of Plectrude to power to rebell themselves, as they crush the Austrasian troops of Thibaut in the forest of Cuise, ally to the Frisians and they devastate Austrasia), he conquers Austria and the South of Germany, he fights the Saxons, as he definitively frees the South of Gaul from the raids and pressure of the Arabs. The victories of Charles are not so much against Plectrude than against Neustria which tends to want to regain its independence (battles of Amblèves, then Vincy in 716 and 717). Charles, like Pepin, is allowing to the throne Merovingians kings he is able to check. He was 'duke of Austrasia', and then mayor of the palace, and his power had become such that, at the death of the Merovingian king, Thierry IV, in 737, he could avoid to name a new king, putting to the test the ability of the new dynasty to reign without the moral caution of the Merovingians as, at this epoch, a part of the aristocrats are still attached to the former dynasty. He was interred in St-Denis, which was where the Merovingians were burried and that deed was likely not of no significance. As he was fighting the Arabs, he had created the Frankish cavalry and, so he could finance his armed forces, he had taken lands from the Church. He used the latter -under the person of St. Boniface- to stabilize his conquests (and Boniface supported him in the case of the lands of the Church). Charles 'The Hammer' did not want to fight the Lombards to support the Pope, because they were his allies of the time and he kept further to that the Arabs remained his main concern. Charles married Rotrude of Trier, the daughter to the count of Hesbayes (who was a faraway ancestor to the Robertians, hence the Capetians), who gave him Pepin and Carloman, and a daughter, Hiltrud (she married, against the will of her brothers, Odilo of Bavaria, thus becoming the mother to Tassilo III). He married then Swanhild (or Swanachild) (a Bavarian, who gave birth to Grifo). Ruodhaid was his concubine (she gave him 4 children)
• Pepin the Short (or Pippin the Short, Pepin the Younger, Pepin III) (715, in Jupilles-9/24/768 in St. Denis): the divide of the territories of Charles 'The Hammer' was made one year before he died, allotting Austrasia, Burgundy and Thuringia to Carloman, Neustria, Provence and Burgundy to Pepin as Grifo, the illegitimate son had no share. Pepin reigned jointly with his brother Carloman until 747, as they first put back order into the Frankish Church with St. Boniface, as the troubles which had been born from Grifo (as he was supported by the Bavarians) bring them to that they re-establish a Merovingian king on the throne. It's the Aquitaine, Bavaria and Alemania which questioned the most the power of Pepin and Carloman. The aristocraties, on the other hand, are keeping to be attached to their Merovingian dynasties. The revolt of Griffon, who had taken place from his lands near Le Mans, had shown the danger represented by the Brittons. Pepin and Carloman created thus a march of Brittany, from Rennes to Vannes and Nantes. Both brothers then recall to order the Saxons, the Alamans and the Bavarians. Carloman, in 747, decides to become a monk in Italy (as he will eventually, after a lapse of time, in a Frankish monastery, in Vienne, in the Rhône Valley) and Pepin becomes the sole ruler of the Frankisk dominions (Carloman's son, Drogon, enters a rebellion against Pepin as he is swiftly put to reason). The power of the Carolingians then has become sufficiently firm that Pepin, in 750, will ask the Pope whether it to be legitimate to an official change of dynasty. This is approved. This agreement stongly founded an alliance between Pepin the Short and the papacy. The argument, which was of effect unto the Frankish aristocrats, is that the Merovingian kings do not have any real power anymore. Pepin is acclaimed like the new king of the Franks, by the magnates, at the Spring Hosting in Soissons in 752 as, to further strengthen his power, he sets a new legitimacy for the Frankish rulers, the one of the coronation. It's, at the same time, a custom coming from the Wisigoths, the permanence of the baptism of Clovis and the pecular alliance between God and the Franks, and the memory of the anointing of the kings in the Old Testament). This leads to a further advance for the relationship between the Franks and the Roman Catholic Church as the ruler, through being anointed, becomes vested with the duty to protect the Church; like a monarch by divine right, he has to govern his peoples in the name of the Church, and under the governance of the Pope! The anointing performed in Soissons was renewed in fall 752 in Mainz, in Austrasia. Stephen II, as a new pope, is threatened by the Lombards as the Byzantines can't come to help him. So, he asked for the help of Pepin. The alliance is settled in 754 as, on July 28th, the Pope personally renews the coronation of Pepin, as the latter officially receives the titles of 'king of Franks' and 'patrice of the Romans'. At the same time, both the heirs of Pepin, Charles and Carloman, are coronated too. Trough 4 military campaigns, Pepin leads the Franks against the Lombards. As far as other sectors of action are concerned, Pepin extends the system of the vassality among the Greats to secure their loyalty and he keeps expelling the Arabs out of the kingdom. He pacifies Bavaria and he has the silver denarius adopted like the basis for the monetary system. Pepin was interred in St. Denis as his corpse was burried the face to earth in a sign of atonement for his sins. Pepin the Short, too, kept developing the Frankish heavy cavalry and the permanent army as he kept too to support the missionarizing work of the Church in Germany and Scandinavia. The duchy of Aquitaine was the last main Frankish province to retain its independency as Pepin eventually subdued it after 8 campaigns, between 760 and 768. The resistance of the province however impressed Pepin which allowed it to some autonomy through conserving its own laws -the Roman law. This was the object of the first ever Carolingian capitular. Pepin too had attached himself the Wisigothic Septimania, to dissociate them from Aquitaine, by according them a large autonomy based on their own laws too. Vascons, however, which constituted the elite of the armies of Aquitaine, were recognized a complete independency however. Pepin married Bertrada of Laon (or Bertha Broadfoot; she was the daughter of the count of Laon; as Pepin already had been wedded to a Danubian princess, Bertrada had been his concubine before she officially became her wife, in 749. As when Charles had been born, Pippin and Bertrada were not married, a doubt has been allowed about Charles' legitimacy. That however did not take place in the 9th century A.D. when the Church eventually managed to definitely impose its conception of the Christian marriage. The link between Charles' parents was a one of the Germanic private marriage, or the 'Friedelehe.' Like the queen, Bertrada is blessed by the Pope along the ceremony of 754; she wanted to play a political role at the beginning of the reign of Charles and Carloman as she will eventually be discarded by Charlemagne in 771. Through his father Caribert, Bertrada belonged to the Hugobertids, like was Plectrude, the wife to Pepin the Middle; she was burried in St. Denis)
• Charlemagne (Charles the Great, Charles I) (4/2/742-1/28/814, in Aachen). we have a page dedicated to Charlemagne. Charlemagne, as Charles 'The Hammer' had founded the Carolingian power substantially, and that his father Pepin the Short had it confirmed in law by the Pope, he led it to its term. He strengthened the Frankish territories against his enemies, he imposed the Frankish authority to the eastern marches, he defended definitively the Pope against the Lombards and he subdued the Saxons, who were the last German people to have remained independent. Meanwhile, he made too all those military works strongers through the development of the Carolingian cultural revival, this endeavour to renovate the litterature and the arts. This apex of the Carolingian power became exhalted when Pope Leo III, in 800, coronated Charlemagne like the western emperor! That made that the imperial dignity was revived for the West, where it had vanished since 476. Charles, according to the Frankish custom, had begun to reign with is brother, Carloman, as the kingdom, before he had died, had been shared between the two sons by Pepin the Short. Charlemagne, at the beginning, had undergone the influence of his mother, Bertrada, and she had arranged his weddings with Desiderata, the daughter of the Lombard king. Charles got loose from that influence beginning in 771, when his brother Carloman ceased to be his co-ruler. Like his 5 legitimate spouses, Charlemagne had: Himiltrude (she was repudiated in 770; she was the mother to Pepin the Hunchback); Desiderata (he married her in 770, and repudiated her in 771); Hildegard (she was Charles' most important wife, being the mother of Louis the Pious and 8 other children; Charles married her in 772; she was of a noble Alaman, or Suevian family, the daughter to Gerold I of Vintzgau, margrave to the Avarian march and prefect of Bavaria; Hildegard died in 783); Fastrada (she married Charles in 784 and gave him two daughters; she was the daughter of a Franconian count and likely the best loved by Charles; Queen Fastrada was the sole among Charles' legitimate wifes to give herself a political stand as she intervened into State politics); Luitgard (she was an Alaman and daughter to count Luitfrid II of Sundgau; Charles married her in 794; she stood like a protectress of the arts and liked hunting; they had no children; Charlemagne had the monastery of Aniane built for her memory; she died in 800; she is burried in Tours). Charlemagne too had many concubines: Madelgard (in 802; maybe a legitimate spouse), Gersuinda (in 808, daughter to Widukind, the ruler of the Saxons), Amaltrud of Vienne, Regina, and Ethelind

  click to a chart of the palaces of Charlemagne

• Louis the Pious (Louis I, Louis the Fair, Louis the Debonaire) (778, in Chasseneuil-de-Poitou-6/20/840, in Ingelheim-am-Rhein, near Mainz): born like a twin to his brother Lothair, the latter died soon after. Louis was named king of Aquitaine in 781, as he was still a child, after the battle of Roncesvalles, in the purpose of stabilizing the region. Even like a lesser sovereign, he had been however coronated by pope Adrian I. This was part of a plan by Charlemagne to have his sons the local rulers of some regions, and raised into the local customs, each of those regions having a military, defensive role relative to one of the borders of the Frankish kingdom. Louis was in Aquitaine, Pepin in Italy, and Charles 'the Younger' in Neustria. That will of Charlemagne however did not equipolate to a will of sharing the empire and each of his sons was regularly sent outside of his 'kingdom' for military campaigns so he got acquainted with the idea of the empire's unity. Charlemagne, in 806, according to the Frankish rules, set his succession, through the 'Divisio Regnorum'. He allotted the territories to his three sons as he preserved the imperial unity however. The imperial title, with Neustria and Austrasia was allotted to Charles the Younger, Italy to Pepin, Aquitaine to Louis, with Septimania, Provence and a part of Burgundy. As his two younger brothers, Charles and Pepin, died in 811 and 810 respectively, Charlemagne, as Louis was his last surviving son, had him, on September 11, 813, recognized by an assembly of lay and ecclesiastical Greats and acclaimed by the people, like co-emperor of the West and being bound to succeed Charlemagne. Louis, in October 816, was coronated in Reims by Pope Stephen IV as Italy, then, remained part of the Empire under the rule of Bernard, the son of Pepin. The counselors of Louis are Bernard, margrave of Septimania and Ebbo, a former serf and archbishop of Reims, as he keeps too some counselors of Charlemagne, like Elisachar, abbott of St-Maximim, near Trier, or Hildebold, archbishop of Cologne as, on another hand, he vacates others. He takes too like his ecclesiastical counselor Benedict of Aniane, a Wisigoth from Septimania, at the purpose of officializing the use of the Rule of Benedict among all the monasteries of the empire. Louis led expeditions against the Vascons who didn't want their duke changed (817, 818), the Slavic Odobrites (817), the Britons (818, 822, 824), and the Croates (820-822). Such expeditions are no more ones to conquer, but ones to maintain only. The Vikings first appeared in the empire in 820 as their first raid did not occur before 824, in the island of Noirmoutier, with the emperor ordering that a 'northern fleet' be built. The Viking and Saracen raids, on the other hand, well showed how the usual, heavy, Carolingian army system was unfit to answer efficiently to such types of attacks. As soon as of 817, as a wooden gallery, between the Palatine Chapel and the court, in Aachen, collapses and he skips any damage, he however sets a sharing of the empire, through the 'Ordinatio imperii' (or the 'Partition of Aachen')! The empire is to be divided, at his death, between his three sons, Lothair, Louis and Pepin, each one receiving, respectively, the imperial dignity, Bavaria and its marches, and Aquitaine. Bernard of Italy is set to keep this territory -according to what Charlemagne already had wanted. Like Charlemagne had done with those 'secondary kingdoms' we evoked above, on the other hand, Louis already had trusted Bavaria to Lothair, and Aquitaine to Pepin, albeit without any title of king. Lothair, at last, was immediately coronated like co-emperor in Aachen and had to be the suzerain to this brothers. That divide was thus endeavouring to reconcile the German customs that the chief's territories had to be divided among his heirs and the concern to maintain the imperial unity, with the one of the sons in charge of the imperial title keeping the supremacy over any of the other sons, or people, vested. It is possible that such a divide had been deviced by the clerics. As Bernard of Italy had rebelled against that divide, Louis the Pious severely punished him, to the point that this latter died, leaving the emperor filled with guilt all along the end of the reign. Louis did a public penance for the fact, before the Pope, at Attigny, in 822 (that meeting, on the other hand, brought back to the forefront some potential opponents to the emperor). During the reign of Louis the Pious, the Slavic marches are unruly, from Denmark to Pannonia as there was not any real military events during the reign. As he became a widower in 819, Louis get married anew, thence he had a new heir, Charles, in 823. This questioned the divide of 817, leading to troubles during the last 20 years of the rule of Louis. The divide project is modified a first time, in 829, giving Alamannia to Charles and leading Lothair to trigger a first rebellion in which he involved his two brothers. That revolt triggers discord between the old and new counselors of the emperor. That ends with that a new divide is deviced, much egalitarian, where none of the brothers receive the imperial duty. Pepin, then is suspected of a revolt, and Louis the German enters in campaign, forcing Louis the Pious to a new sharing, in Jonac, in 832 (the Aquitaine is passed to Charles, Pepin is disvested as the Empire is kept by Lothair). A new rebellion stars in 833, with Pope Gregory IV supporting Lothair. As Louis the Pious had not recognized this pope like valid, this brings his armies to desertion (the famed episode of the 'Lügenfeld', or 'Field of Lies'), as, in November, he is deprived from his imperial title! The public opinion however turning against that rebellion, Louis the Pious is back like an emperor again in 834 as his three sons quarel between themselves and that the imperial counselors are purged. A new imperial decision about the fate of the Empire, at the Diet of Crémieux, allows Pepin and Louis the German at the court back as Lothair is deprieved of all his territories, the Italy excepted, and they are given to Charles, the son of the second marriage of Louis the Pious. Louis the German enters a revolt against the decision again as a meeting at Quierzy-sur-Oise tend to more and more favour Charles and, in 838, at Pepin's death, he is further augmented with Aquitaine. That again triggers a fratricidal revolt, in 839, with Danes stepping in, and Lothair, this time, allied to his father. The revolt ends with a new divide decision as, as it bans Pepin, tend to share the empire into two large, western and eastern halves, with Lothair taking East, and Charles the Bald, the son of the second marriage, the West, and Louis the German having no more than Bavaria. Louis the Pious managed to have that last form of the sharing respected, as he unluckily died just after, in June 840. Those struggles about how the Empire was to be divided were well showing the opposition which still existed between the Frankisk custom of sharing the sovereing's territories between all his sons and a more theoretical conception of the State, stressing that the unity of the Empire had to be guaranteed. Louis the Pious was burried near his mother, Hildegard, in the abbey of St-Arnould of Lay-St-Christophe. The piety of Louis (hence his surname) is due to that, as he was not the elder of the sons of Charlemagne, he had to be bound to a clerical status and he received the appropriate instruction for that. The piety of Louis the Pious allows for more independency for the papacy as the court becomes populated with prelates and clerics, like Agobard, or Benedict of Aniane, as the Greats, during Louis' rule, tends to assert their power against the emperor, highlighting how the ideal of a Christian reign did oppose to the violence or avidity of the magnates. Louis the Pious had like a spouse Theudelind of Sens (in 793; she gave him two children); then Ermengardee (or Irmengarde) of Hesbaye (spoused in 798; she was a relative to Charles 'the Hammer', and belonging to the lineage of the Robertians, hence the Capetians; she was a Frank; she bore 6 children to Louis; she took part into policy-making, of it the condemnation of Bernard of Italy; she died in Angers in 818); and Judith (spoused in 819; a Frank born in Bavaria, and relative to the powerful family of the Welfs, of Burgundy; she was mother to Charles the Bald; she died in 843; she is interred in St-Martin of Tours; her sister, Hemma, married Louis the German, who was the son-in-law of Judith)

The Treaty of Verdun (843)

The quarrels between the first-born sons of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald, son of Louis and Judith, started again as soon as Louis' death. Charles the Bald, as allied to Louis the German fight against Lothair, who intends to claim the Empire, as allied to his nephew Pepin II of Aquitaine. They win at the battle of Fontenay-en-Puisaye (June 841), as, through the Oaths of Strasbourg (February 14th, 842) they do reinforce their alliance, bringing Lothair to ask for peace. That peace transforms into the Treaty of Verdun in 843. Those struggle, further, had weakened the Carolingien Empire in the eyes of the Viking and Arab raiders who attacked the Seine river in 841, or Arles, in 842, respectively. Those fights, further, increased the weakening of the imperial unity as each brother had have to assure himself the trustfullness of his own counts and dignitaries by allotting them lands further, with tended to depress the own land wealth of the sovereigns. As each of the contenders was already settled unto some territories (Lothair was in Italy, Louis the German in Bavaria, and Charles the Bald in Aquitaine), this treaty tend to confirm that sharing and adds to that the concern of the clerics that each share gets the same resource, from the North Sea or the Baltic Sea down to the Mediterranean. Lothair is allotted with the territories belonging to the center of the Carolingian empire, from the current Netherlands to Italy, and with Burgundy and Provence. Louis the German is taking the eastern part of the empire, East of the Rhine River and North and East of Italy. Charles the Bald is allotted with the West, West of the Rhone River (what will become later France). And Pepin II takes the Aquitaine, albeit under the suzerainty of Charles the Bald. At that time, those three shares are officially given their names of Middle Francia ('Francia media', 'middle land of the Franks'), East Francia ('Francia orientalis'), and West Francia ('Francia occidentalis'). The Treaty of Verdun, even if it confers the imperial dignity to Lothair, is a setback compared to the previous trend through which the sharing of the Empire was upset with the real supremacy of the titular holder of the imperial title. Lothair, really, although the holder of the Empire, has in no case the means to exert his power over the two other sets of territories hold by Louis the German and Charles the Bald! In 847, in a meeting at Meerssen, Lothair endeavoured to quench any further potential for civil wars, as the Frankish warriors were now obliged to join the imperial armies in the case of a foreign war only, preventing that the army system be used for those brotherly wars. Any free man, on the other hand, was allowed to choose like his suzerain any other one than his king. The idea of a division of the empire opposed, eventually, to the endeavours of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious to maintain an united empire. The idea of the divide may be ascribed to Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims (806-882), as he supported that the dream of a united Christendom did not appear under the guise of an empire, however ideal, but under the concrete form of a number of unit States, each being a member of one mighty body, the great Republic of Christendom. Hincmar further was a strong proponent of Charles the Bald, after having been of Louis the Pious, wishing that Lorraine came under his rule too. The views of Hincmar might have been inspired too by Charles the Bald himself, as it might that a propension of Hincmar to take some independency from the papacy might hint to that Rome was not at the origin of such political conceptions. Church, on the other hand, as soon as the reign of Louis the Pious had regained strength and stated now that the Pope had the spiritual supremacy over lay rulers and the Kingdom of God, which had been defended like his role by Charlemagne, was now to be identified with the Church, and Church kept being the defensor of the idea of unity (and kept further, after that, even when passed under the influence of the struggles between Italian petty rulers). As Lothair is dying early, in 855, his lot, further is divided into his own sons, one of them Louis II is keeping to hold the imperial titulature. Louis the German and Charles the Bald allied themselves to spoil their nephew of his heritage, with the Treaty of Meerssen, in 870, making the sharing of the northern territories of Lothair between them both. It's to be noted that the term 'Lotharingia' came out at the death of Lothair only, when that part of his territories were allotted to his son Lothair). Louis II did only keep the southern territories of his father. Despite that Charles the Bald, when Louis II died, in 875, had himself made recognized like the emperor by the pope, in Rome, the Carolingian empire kept being more divided further, and even into the different parts which had been born from the Treaty of Verdun. The idea of the empire seems to have continued, however. The German sovereigns, for example, albeit they don't belong to the Carolingian lineage since 888, keep to claim the continuation of the heritage of Charlemagne! As far as the territorial logics of the divide of the Treaty of Verdun is concerned, one may see appear, between 829 and 839, for the West, that logics which encompasses Aquitaine as it evolves, above all, little by little, towards the Seine River (and taking in account, in the same time, Provence or Septimania). This is the way how, beginning with the treaty in Verdun, in 843 and through two meeting in the palace in Meerssen (in 847 and in 851), that the two political sets which were to become France, on the one hand, and Germany, on the other, are tending to appear. The move was mostly made however during the third, and last, meeting in Meerssen, when Charles the Bald and Louis the German put an end to the unity of those territories, which until then, were composing the Lotharingia. Lotharingia were, in fact, the real and old center of the Carolingian empire

West Francia Carolingians (843-987)

• Charles the Bald (Charles II) (6/13/823 in Frankfurt-am-Rhein-10/6/877 in Avrieux, in Savoy): son of Louis the Pious and his second wife Judith, Charles the Bald had as a tutor, for 9 years, the famed Walafrid Strabo, a monk in the Reichenau abbey, a scholar who was the defensor of the imperial cult and a famed commentator of the Bible. The surname of 'bald' comes from that, in May 877, when the abbey St-Corneille, in Compiegne, was consecrated, Charles would have had his head shaved like a sign of his submission to the Church, disregarding the Frankisk custom according to which the Frankish kings always had to be long-haired. Charles took part into the quarrels which ensued from the fact he had not been part of the sharing of the empire between his three semi-brothers as, after his father's death, in 840, he allies himself to one of them, Louis the German, against Lothair, leading to the Oaths of Strasbourg (February 842) and to the Treaty of Verdun (843). Through the Treaty of Verdun, Charles is vested with all the territories of the West of the Empire, West of the Rhone River, those territories named like the 'West Francia' ('Francia occidentalis'). The three brothers, Louis the German, Lothair, and Charles the Bald are then reigning, for a while, in a real spirit of confraternity, as they meet at regular intervals. Charles the Bald, as he had the 'Annales Royales' -annals of the Carolingians- keeping to be written, wanted to stress the continuity of the dynasty despite the preceding troubles which had looked like they were to compromise the Carolingian empire. Charles the Bald, on another hand, is also dealing, between 841 and 851, with the Britons (of continental Brittany) and then, between 856 and 861, with the Viking raids, which are developint. The inability of Charles to face the Vikings brings to a revolt of the magnates, who are then helping Louis the German to invade West Francia and to discharge him. The prelates of the kingdomm however, as they are led by Hincmar of Reims, ask for the departure of the Germans and Charles the Bald to be back. Charles is supported too by the Welfs, the lineage of his mother Judith. Throught the Edict of Pistres , in 864, Charles the Bald had made built fortified bridges along the rivers of his territories to impede the Vikings progresses as that same edict too was stating that any man in the kingdom owning a horse was to serve in the king's cavalry). Charles widened its share of Provence, in 863, and its one in Lotharingia, in 869 as he had to intervene into Aquitaine to back his authority there. Through the Treaty of Meerssen in August 870, he ended sharing, between himself and Louis the German, the territories of the North of the Middle Francia as, after the death of Louis II, in 875, who the elder son of Lothair and the holder of the imperial dignity, it had himself made coronated in Rome by Pope John VIII on Christmas Day, 75 exactly that is, after Charlemagne had been coronated. He took the opportunity too to seize Provence and the kingdom of Italy. Despite the death of Louis the German, in August 876, his sons are militarily strong enough to forbid any change in the statu quo in that part of the empire (battle of Andernach in October 876). Through the capitulary of Quierzy-sur-Oise, in June 877, Charles the Bald is considered to have laid the foundations of the development of the feudality by agreeing to that the dignities of the counts become hereditary (it was just about, indeed, a transient decision only, which was aiming at settling those cases which could occur as he was to be absent from the kingdom, as he was going to campaign into Italy). He died few later. The Frankish noblemen had balked following him into this Italian campaign. As he was friend to the arts, Charles the Bald was close too to the Church, the support of which it appreciated against the Greats, and among which clerics he chose his counselors. Charles the Bald has as a wife Ermentrude of Orléans (Hirmentrude, Irmintrud; from the lineage of Charles 'The Hammer'; spoused in December 842 in Quierzy; she bore to him 9 children; died in 869; while he was married, Charles the Bald had like a concubine Richilde and he eventually got separated from Ermentrude in 867; Ermentrude was the mother to Louis the Stammerer; she was endowed with embroidery; she was interred in St. Denis); Charles then spoused Richilde (she was the sister to Boso of Provence, the Duke of the Transjurane Burgundy; she was first the concubine of Charles as he eventually married her in 870, after his first wife died, at the effect to use the influence of Richilde's family in Lotharingia; played a political role in the kingdom during that the king was absent and she took power at his death, in 877; she is suspected to have been an accomplice of the poisoning of Charles the Bald by Sedecias, a Jew and the king's physician)
• Louis the Stammerer (11/1/846-4/11/879, in Compiegne): the son of Charles the Bald and Ermentrude of Orléans, he was engaged to a daughter of Erispoe, the Duke of Brittany. Named king of Aquitaine in 867, he succeeded to his father in 877, as he died as early as 879. He had been coronated first by Hincmar of Reims in December 877 and, then again, by Pope John VIII in Troyes, in September 878, the short reign of Louis the Stammerer is submitted to the power of the magnates. Charles the Bald's widow, Richilde tried to exert power as the magnates refuse. Like his surname, Louis was a stammerer, hindering his authority further. He died as he was leaving to fight the Vikings. Louis the Stammerer is the ruler who is at the origin of the independency of Catalonia. Louis the Stammerer spoused Ansgard of Burgundy, in 862 (she gave him Louis III and Carloman II and three other children; their marriage had been secret and, when Charles the Bald wanted to marry Louis with Adelaide of Paris, he had to have this first marriage cancelled); Louis, so, then spoused Adelaide of Paris in 878 (Adelaide of Friuli, Aélis; she was a heir to Louis the Pious, or of a concubine of Charlemagne, leading in any case that her marriage with Louis the Stammerer was a case of consanguinity (the Pope, for example, refused to coronate her like a queen); she was the daughter to Adalhard, marquis of Friuli and count of the palace; she gave Louis the Stammerer Charles III; she died in 901; she was too mother to Cunegund, who, marrying the palatine count Wigerich of Bidgau, is the stem of the medieval lineage of the Luxemburg). At Louis's death, Ansgard tried to have the cancellation of his marriage cancelled and she wants to have her children access the throne but Adelaide gave birth to a male
• Louis III (c. 863-882): the son of Louis the Stammerer and Ansgard. His tutor was Theodoric of Vergy, counselor of Charles the Bald and chamberlain of Louis the Stammerer. Although his legitimacy and the one of his brother be questioned by queen Adelaide, Louis reigned jointly with his brother, Carloman II, since 879. Richilde, Charles the Bald's widow, is present, during their reign, at the power. Some noblesmen would have liked that Louis reign alone. At the divide of Amiens, in March 880, Louis did take West Francia and Neustria, and Carloman western Burgundy, Aquitaine and Septimania. Duke Boso made himself independent in Provence as, despite they allied with Charles the Fat, both the kings of West Francia, could not retake it. To be able to fight the Vikings, Louis III and Carloman II are obliged do give western Lotharingia to the son of Louis the German (treaty of Ribemont, 880) and they have too to defend their ruel in Burgundy, where, Boso, the brother-in-law to Charles the Bald, is trying to gain control. Both the kings brillantly opposed to the Vikings (victory of November 879, then of Louis III alone in August 881). Louis III found a few elevated death, as he shattered one' head against a lintel as he was riding, chasing a women. He was burried in St. Denis. He died without children and the kingdom then passed to Carloman II
• Carloman II (867-12/12/884, in the forest of Lyons, between Rouen and Gournay-en-Bray): he was the son of Louis the Stammerer and Ansgard, and the brother to Louis III. He too had as a tutor Theodoric of Vergy. He reigned jointly with his brother Louis since 879. At the sharing of Amiens, in 880, he took western Burgundy, Aquitaine and Septimania. After the death of Louis III in 882, he reigned alone. He was affronted to the damages caused by the Viking raids and to magnates' revolts. He died as soon as 884, as he was 17 years old only, in a hunting accident when one of his vassals accidentally wounded him. He died without children. He is interred in St. Denis
• Charles III (Charles the Simple, Charles the Straightforward) (9/17/879-10/7/929, in Péronne): he was the posthumous son to Louis the Stammerer and Adelaide of Paris. It was at first his semi-brothers, Louis and Carloman, who took power. As they did childless, it's thus Charles who is to succeed them. Being 5 years old only however, the Greats, with Hugh the Abbot, do entrust Charles the Fat, of Germany, with the regency of West Francia. Hugh the Abbot was a Welf, the transient administrator of the house of the Robertians, the ancestors to the Capetians; nephew to empress Judith. He really was an abbot. Since the previous reigns he had been trustful to the legitimate king and the Carolingian family, and, however, he then favoured the influence of Charles the Fat. As he had as a mission to retake their lands from the Robertians, he however protected Odo and Robert, the sons of Robert the Strong. When Charles the Fat was removed from power by the Greats in Germany in 887, those of West Francia elected, like the king of France, Odo (or Eudes I), count of Paris (as the territories of the Robertians has come back to them and Odo gained his fame from his fights against the Vikings) and did let to Charles III territories between the Seine and the Rhine rivers only. Charles III however, with the support of Foulques the Venerable, the archbishop of Reims, is coronated in January 893 and, after that he shared the throne with Odo and being supported by some of his noblesmen, he remained the sole ruler when the latter died in January 898, Odo having been pressured by Arnulf of Carinthia, the king of East Francia, to recognize Charles like the legitimate king. As far as the Vikings are concerned, Charles III is famed for being the author of the treaty of St-Clair-sur-Epte by which the Nordmen were allotted Normandy, in the person of one of their chiefs, Rollo, against the promise of being baptized. This settlement of the Vikings in Normandy heralded the end of their raids. Ste Walburga, sister to Willibald, and she-abbott in Heidesheim in the 8th century A.D. turned favored by Charles III and about a kingdom's protectress. Charles III's reign was above all highlighted by the development of the power of the magnates, as they are building castles and keeps. Among those Greats are Gislebert of Lotharingia, Raoul of Burgundy, or Robert of France (he is another son of Robert the Strong, who is 'Duke of Franks'; he recognized Charles III at first and he was the grandfather to Hugh Capet). Queen Richilde seems to play a role still, as the Greats oblige her to get distant, in Provence, and she dies in 910. Due to the despotic government of Haganon, the favorite of Charles III, the Greats enter a revolt in 922, as led by Robert of France. Charles is deposed, as Robert is elected king of France on June 29th, 922 (and he is even coronated by Gautier, the archbishop of Sens). A new battle occurs in 923 along which Robert of France is killed and his son Hugh the Great (or Hugh the Abbot) immediately succeeds him (Hugh had as a first spouse the sister to the queen Eadgifu of England). The king however was defeated again, and the magnates, this time, elected Raoul of Burgundy as Charles III is eventually kept prisoner during 6 years, at the end of what, he died, on October 9th, 929. Charles III married, in 907, Frederonne (she was the widow of Henry I the Fowler and she gave daughters only to Charles; the king got distant from her; she died in 917). Charles III then married Eadgifu in February 919 (Ogiva, Edgifu; she was the daughter to Edward the Elder, king of Wessex and England; she was the mother to Louis IV and she fled to ther father, with her son, during that Charles III was kept prisoner; Louis IV, thus got his surname of 'd'Outremer' as she eventually married the son of the prison-keeper of her husband; she had been back in France, in 936, to have his son crowned). Charles III's surname, 'the Simple' means 'honest', 'straightforward'
• about the Robertians: the Robertians played to the last Carolingians the role that themselves they had played to the last Merovingians. The Robertians are maybe from the lineage of a Neustrian of about 630, who was the mayor of the palace of Neustria and, as far as their lineage is concerned, on a lesser distance, they are more or less distantly belonging to a large ensemble of family alliances by the Carolingians. Their origin, then, is the county of Hesbaye, near Tongeren, current eastern Belgium. Robertians had among their family St. Rupert (about 660-710) the apostle of Bavaria, Carinthia and Austria. Robert the Strong, who the first really marking character of the lineage, was the nephew of a daughter of Louis the Pious. Himself and his brothers, during the quarrels which occurred between the heirs of Louis the Pious, took the party of Charles the Bald, as they thus received domains in West Francia. After a form of disfavor, beginning in 866, which leads to that Hugh the Abbot, a Welf -from the poweful family of the former Impress Judith- taking in administration the territories of the Robertian lineage, the sons of Robert the Strong, Odo and Robert, as they were however protected by this same Hugh, managed to retake the head of their house as their bravery, facing the Vikings and the tendency of the Frankish magnates to rebellion, is leading them towards the power. Hugh the Great, son of Robert, reinforced his strength upon the Carolingians. He was the father to Hugh Capet, who he had with Hedwige of Saxony, sister to Henry I the Fowler. Thence, the influence of Hugh Capet is increasing under the shadow of the one of the Ottonian rulers who since the mid-9th century have restored the Empire in Germany as, in 987, he becomes the king of Franks. He surely owed the throne to his patent weakness, as West Francia was plunging into the feudal disorders. He indeed had no real power, leading to that he was neither of importance and of danger nor for the Ottonian earnestness of a new, great Christian empire, nor for the French feudal lords. From the reading of local histories -like, for example, the one of Burgundy- it looks like the contrast between Carolingians and Robertians to be shaded somehow however. Carolingians in fact, rested on their Greats to maintain the unity of Francia occidentalis and Robertians, for example, remained faithful to their legitimate rulers. That was still seen when the last Carolingians cared about keeping Burgundy, through faithfull Robertians, under their control
• Louis IV (Louis d'Outremer, Louis Transmarinus) (921, in Laon-9/10/954): as West Francia is breaking up, as power there is transitioning towards the magnates who are rendering themselves independent in their territories, like the great duchies, counties or independent entities -like Aquitaine, Normandy, Flanders or Burgundy, Louis IV came back of England in 936. His mother had taken him there, to the court of his grandfather, Edward the Elder, and then of his uncle, Athelstan of England, both kings of Wessex and England, where he had been raised, during the captivity of his father, Charles III. When the Robertian, Raoul of Burgundy, died, Hugh the Great, his successor in the lineage, did let the legitimate Carolingian to be back on the throne, as part, on the one hand, of his own interests in the struggles he leads for power among Robertians, and, on the other hand, too, because the Frankish Greats wanted so. Louis IV is coronated on June 19th, 936 by Artaud, archbishop of Reims, in the church of the abbey of Laon. Laon had now become the stronghold of the Carolingians, and the center of the domains unto which they really have any authority. The young Carolingian however is going to look for getting emancipated from Hugh, further as he is supported by a part of the magnates. Louis IV however is defeated militarily in 940 and then captured by the Vikings in 945. The emperor of Germany however intervenes in his favour. Louis dies in 954, accidentally falling from a horse. Louis IV is interred in St-Remy of Reims, near the grave of St. Remy. Despite a conflict against Otto I the Great, he married, in 939, Gerberga of Saxony, the daughter to Henry I the Fowler and sister to Otto. She bore 7 children to him, of them Lothair, the successor to Louis IV, along with Charles, Duke of Lower Lorraine, the last of the pretenders to the Carolingian crown. Hedwige had, for his first weddings, spoused Gislebert, duke of Lotharingia; she was the she-regent of the kingdom during that Louis IV was prisoner, and again during the regency for Lothair. She died in 969 or 984 as she was very clever and very literate. She had a strong character and she really intervened into the political affairs of the time
• Lothair (Lothair IV) (c. 941, in Laon-3/2/986, in Laon): Lothair succeeded to his father Louis IV in 954, as he was coronated on November 12th 954 in the abbey of St-Remi of Reims by the archbishop there, Artaud. A project of a sharing of power between him and his brother Charles did not manage to come to terms as the latter was endowed with the duchy of Lower Lorraine by the emperor Otto II (who is their cousin). The Ottonians however will always keep to consider Charles like their pretender to the throne of West Francia and never miss an opportunity to have accede to the crown. His mother, Gerberga, exerts the regency for her son. Hugh the Great keeps being present as, in exchange that he did not oppose to Lothair accessing the crown, he received Aquitaine; Hugh, further, is officially the warder of the domains of the king. When Hugh died, about 955, Lothair intervened into his succession by confirming Hugh Capet like a duke, and with the territories about Paris as, however, he gave Burgundy to Hugh's younger brother. Lothair himself, as he is 15 years old only, passes unter the tutelage of Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, and his uncle. Lothaire fought against the duke of Normandy and then attempted to re-create Lotharingia, when his co-tutor, the duke of Flanders, died in 962. Such a territory would have become his territorial basis for the reconquest of his kingdom against the magnates. Adalberon, the new archbishop of Reims however, did oppose the project, arguing that the kingdom doesn't need further struggles. Lothair however makes a swift campaign, taking Aachen, and with the famed episode that he had the statue of an eagle, on the roof of the palace, turned into a symbolic direction. Lothair, when Otto II died, became in turn the tutor for Otto III, in 983. That conflict in Lotharingia had as a consequence to have Adalberon getting distant from the Carolingian cause, and joining to Hugh Capet, the successor to Hugh the Great. Hugh, after that he had supported Lothair against Otto II, eventually rallied Otto III. Adalberon of Reims, as far as he is concerned, was a cleric who had been named by Otton I due to that the emperor had his right, as the defender of the Church and of Rome, to name the clerics on the Carolingian territories, hence in West Francia too. The clerics there, so, are changed into ones who don't support the western Carolingians anymore. Lothair died as he was preparing to campaign against Liège and Cambrai. By the end of his reign however, peace tended to settle between Otto II, Lothair and Charles of Lower Lorraine. It's under Lothair that any form of link between the kingdom and the march of Spain was definitively severed. Lothair had a concubine, who would have been the sister to the mayor of the palace of Charles of Lorraine, from whom he had two illegitimate children. Lothair then had as a wife Emma of Italy, daughter to Lothair II of Italy (or Lothair of Arles), king of Italy and belonging to the house of Burgundy (her mother, after the death of his father, spoused in second marriage, Otton I the Great and thus became empress and the mother to Otto II! Lothair and Emma had two children, of them Louis V, the last of the Carolingians in West Francia; she is said to have had Lothair poisoned and she was driven out from the court, along with Adalberon of Laon by his son, Louis, when he became king; Emma too had been accused of being adultery with Adalberon, bishop of Laon as she had been cleared of the accusation by Adalberon of Reims; she eventually married a successor to Otto I
• Louis V (Louis the Indolent, Louis the Sluggard) (c. 967-5/22/987): the son of Lothair and Emma of Italy, he reigned one year only. When she had been accused of adultery, queen Emma, fearing that Charles of Lorraine claim the crown, had asked to Lothair to have Louis associated to the throne, in 979, in Compiegne (he had been then coronated by Adalberon of Laon) and she had married him, about 980, with Adelaide, so he gets heirs. Louis and Adelaide had been proclaimed then 'monarchs of Aquitaine'. As soon as he assumed power, Louis V accused his mother Emma, together with Adalberon of Laon, to have poisoned Lothair and he bans them from the court. Louis, then, orders an assembly of the Franks, in Compiegne, at the effect of judging Adalberon of Laon -with whom however he had reconciled himself. Adalberon had supported Otto II when the latter was in conflict with Lothair. However, on the eve of the assembly, Louis V died from an accidental fall from his horse, during a hunting party. He might, as an alternate cause, have been poisoned by his mother. As Louis V has no heirs, a struggle for the crown begins. Charles of Lower Lorraine takes Laon and has himself proclaimed king but the Greats, as assembled in Senlis, in July 987, do elect Hugh Capet like the king of the Franks. Gerbert of Aurillac is aside Adalberon of Reims like a supporter of Hugh and both are supporting him as they are supporting the Ottonian of building a new Christian empire in the West. Hugh, being weak, could not be able to oppose the Ottonians, contrarily to Charles of Lorraine who, further, wanted to get distant from the German tutelage. Against Charles certainly played too, at the eyes of magnates of West Francia, that he always had been the candidate of the Ottonians there. Charles of Lower Lorraine, eventually was betrayed by Ascelin, bishop of Laon, and delivered to Hugh Capet. Charles died in 991 as his son, Otto, succeeding to him like the duke of Lower Lorraine, did not have any a son. Otto remained a vassal of the Ottonians. Louis V had married Adelaide (Adelaide the White; the daughter to Foulque II the Good, count of Anjou; twice a widow, she was 20 years older than the king; this difference of age and the debauchery of Louis led to a divorce, in 984; Adelaide died in 1026; she is the mother, in a fourth weddings, to Constance of Arles, queen of France and wife of Robert the Pious, son of Hugh Capet; Adelaide was interred in the abbey of Montmajour

Middle Francia Carolingians (843-863)

• Lothair I (Lothar) (795-9/29/855, in Prüm): he was the son of Louis the Pious and Ermengarde. Allotted first with Bavaria by his fater, he was associated to the empire, in 817, through the 'Ordinatio Imperii' making him the sole real heir to Louis the Pious. Recognized like co-king of Franks, king of the Lombards, in 820, he is coronated co-emperor by Pope Paschal I. Lothair took part into the quarrels concerning what share of the empire was to be attributed to Charles the Bald, son of a second marriage of Louis the Pious. At Louis' death, in 840, Louis the German and Charles the Bald refused to recognize him like the emperor. Through the battle of Fontenay, then the Oaths of Strasbourg, this leads to the treaty of Verdun, in 843, by which both brothers allott to Lothair a mere, long band of territories, running from the North Sea to the Mediterranean and Italy, albeit keeping him however with the imperial dignity. Lothair I eventually abdicated, in 855, taking care, through the treaty of Prüm, to share his lot, in turn, between his sons. Louis II the Younger got the imperial title and Italy. During the reign of Lothair I, Italy and Provence increasingly became the preys to Saracen raids, with even Rome threatened; Charles received Provence (and he had Girard of Roussillon like his tutor, who will expell the Vikings from the Rhone delta; Charles may be considered a Carolingian, as the king of this kingdom of Provence); Lothair II is allotted with the northern part of his father's territories, from Switzerland to Frisia. Lothair I had as a wife, in 821, Ermengarde of Tours (she was the daughter to the count of Tours and of Upper Alsace; she had 9 children from Lothair. She was very pious. Raban Maur composed the epitaph for her tomb; she died in 851)
• Louis II the Younger (825-8/12/875): he was the son of Lothair I. He was king of Italy in 844, and co-emperor in 850. He shared the Lombard duchy of Benevento in two. By the death of Lothair I, as he was discontent of getting Italy only, he allied to Louis the German, his uncle, against his brother Lothair II (who himself was supported by Charles the Bald) and he later eventually reconciled with his brother. He inherited the territories of his brother Charles when the latter dies (Provence, Burgundy) as he enters into a conflict with the pope as he is supporting his brother Lothair II in the case of the latter's divorce, in 864. When Lothair II dies, in 869, and despite the support of Pope Adrian II, he can't inherit the territories of him due to that, as he is occupied in Benevento to fight the Arabs, his uncles, Louis the German and Charles the Bald, share those territories between themselves at the treaty of Meerssen. As Louis II died without any male heir, the imperial title and his territories passed to Charles the Bald. He was interred in the church St-Ambrose, in Milan. As he had no children, he designated his cousin, Carloman, the son to Louis the German, like his heir for Italy. After his death however, the noblesmen of there did elect Charles the Bald. Louis II had married Engelberga (Angilberga; she belonged to a great family of Italy; she died in 875)
• Lothair II (825-9/8/869): the son to Lothair I, he was allotted Lotharingia proper by his father, Lorraine, that is. Although that Charles, one of his brothers, had promised him with his domains, most of those, in 863, passed to Louis II, their other brother. As he had married Teutberga and she had not bore him any heir, she repudiated her, as supported by some bishops, and got thus into a quarrel with the pope (as the wife had found harbour by Charles the Bald). The pope immediately excommunicated the second wife he had taken, Waldrada, along with the children they had had -like illegitimates. Those quarrels took most of the time of his reign, as both his uncles, Louis the German and Charles the Bald, along with his brother Louis II the Younger, took part of them. He was obliged to re-take Teutberga as, this time, it is the queen who wanted to divorce. Teutberga was belonging to the powerful family of the Bosonids

East Francia Carolingians (843-911) and German Rulers (911-1002)

The imperial title was only episodically borne by kings of Germania (Arnoul, 896-899) or of Italy (Bérenger I, 915-924) and the last Carolingian to have prevailed over Germania was to be Louis IV the Child (died 911). The very last Carolingian emperor had been Charles the Fat by the end of the 9th century A.D. as German duchies rose to power, like Franconia, Saxony, Lorraine, Swabia, and Bavaria which thus again turned independent from the Frankish rule. Conrad I, duke of Franconia was elected the German king by 911, which marked the extinction of the Carolingian empire in the East and the will of ethnic dukes not to be ruled by a foreign king. The new, German king managed to subordinate the German duchies for a time. About 899 A.D. no Carolingian of the original line claimed the Empire anymore. Ethnic identities and reluctance to centralization had won over the ancient will of Charlemagne of making the restored Empire a unified one. Henry I the Fowler, a Saxon, appeared in Francia orientalis and he endeavoured to control State back and to fight against Magyars and Danes. He re-founded the Carolingian state, gave Church properties to his faithful and re-creating the Court and the intrication between state, administration and Church -which was to give under his successor Otto I the 'Reichskirche' system associating Church to the imperial administration. He added that with the 'Drang nach Osten,' that push of German civilization against Slavs with soldiers-peasants and new cities at the confines. Henry I was acknowledged king of Teutons by the Diet of Fritzlar as his son Otto I by 936 A.D. was elected in Aachen by the Great of the five Germanic ethnic entities, or Lorrains, Saxons, Franconians, Swabians and Bavarians and of the 'two peoples,' or the Franks and Saxons, with the support of both archbishops of Mainz and Köln. Above all however, the legitimacy of that Saxon dynasty mostly came with the victory over Magyar invaders at the battle of the Lechfeld in 955 and from that he obtained in 962 the imperial crown from pope Jean XII (955-964). Papacy albeit at the deepest of its decline, saw with the Ottonians the restoration of the Carolingian empire and the sole way to put a end to Italian disorders thus the threats against the papal independency. Germany had quickly gotten over the troubles of the turn of the century. Ottonians however swiftly met with the power of the Byzantines which then was in a phase of expansion as Otto II was to marry a Greek princess to have the relations pacified. That renewed encounter between a empire in the West and Byzantium eventually turned the harmful and syncretist utopia by Otto III (980-1002) who, with Gerbert -next pope Sylvester II- had the dream of a new, cosmopolitan, Christian empire which would extend to the East and of a eastern inspiration as the emperor would be a co-pope and the pope a kind of Patriarch of Constantinople. Universalist claims of the new empire were asserted trough imperial portraits. Provinces of the Empire, under Otto II, were Germania, Francia, Italia and Alemania as, under Otto III, they were Sclavonia, Germania, Gaul and Rome as the utopia of Otto III was expressed into a iconography which took up with Roman apotheosis. The rise of the Ottonians in Germany was contemporary to the development of Robertians in the Francia occidentalis as Ottonians, in a way, tended to support the legitimacy of the last Carolingians there. Otto III's dreams failure had eventually turned a renascent papacy into the one who attributed the Empire. It is under Henry II (1002-1024) that the Empire and the Reichskirche were to reach their apogee, which was to terminated by 1050 when the Ottonian dynasty passed away and the early papal theocratic demands with the Gregorian Reform by which the pope gave a new definition to this relations with State on the basis of the endeavours of the Cluniac reform in Germany. In terms, strictly, of power in Germany, the election in Fritzlar eventually had established the idea of State as opposed to the patrimonial view of it even if that State, which was to become the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation mostly, albeit a indication of the fundamental unity of peoples of Francia orientalis, was a balance between the power of the Greats and the one of the king. Ottonian plan's weaknesses were due to that it mostly was a ideological, political, or even religious one, and disputed. Dispute came from the Cluniac order which was leading to Church's refusal to accept temporal power's tutelage. The Ottonians were a interpenetration of the temporal and spiritual as people of the Empire however, long were nostalgic of such a greatness

The pope had given the translation of the Carolingian empire in 962 to Ottonians, which constituted the 'Second German Reich', to last until 1806 A.D. as it then turned the richest and most politically powerful part of Europe. The new empire began moving eastward, beginning a long process of colonization of slavic lands. Unlike France or England however, the Holy Roman Empire of The German Nation never really managed to institute a central power over a multitude of smaller entities. None of the emperors was strong enough to control the empire for a sustained period of time against German particularism as the Holy Roman Empire remained inheritable but elective instead, or was involved in Italy. German particularism was likely based upon territorial duchies which themselves referred to ancient tribal groups

• Louis (or Ludwig) the German (Louis II, Louis the Bavarian) (c. 806-8/28/876): the son to Louis the Pious and Ermengarde, he was allotted with Bavaria by the first divide project of the Empire in 817 -the 'Ordinatio Imperii'. He spent his infancy at the court of Charlemagne of whom he is said to have won the heart. He began to really rule in Bavaria since 825 only, when he had to fight against the Wends and the Sorbs on the frontiers. He increased his share in southern Germany when he married Hemma, in 826, the sister to empress Judith. Like his brothers, he took part into the quarrels which had been born from the new allotment performed by Louis the Pious when a new son was born to him from his second marriage with Judith. Louis the German mostly took part in the second of those, in 832, because he had been promised Alamannia, by his brothers Lothair and Pepin, in case of success. He made peace with his father in 836. He became the instigator however of the last conflict, in 839, when he invaded Alemani again and being won. At the death of Louis the Pious, in 840, when Lothair claimed the whole of the Empire, Louis the German allied to his semi-brother Charles the Bald and vainquished their brothers Lothair and Pepin II in the battle of Fontenay, in 841. Negociations began on an island on the Saône River eventually became the treaty of Verdun, in 843. There, Louis obtained all the East of the Empire, 'East Francia', or 'Francia orientalis' that is! He settled his court in Regensburg, current Germany, then crushes a revolt in Saxony in 842 and subdues the Odobrites as he leads campaigns against the Bohemians, the Moravians and some other Slavic tribes as he is relatively unsuccessful against the Vikings raids which are beginning to occur along the coasts. Since about 852, founding himself upon Aquitaine and his son Louis, Louis the German begins to get interested into the crown of West Francia, the western part of the Empire which had been transfered, by the treaty of Verdun, to Charles the Bald. That crow, further, is offered to him by the magnates there and the people who are discontent of how cruelly Charles the Bald is reigning. Louis the German eventually invades West Francia in 858 as treasons and betrayals, along with the trustfullness of the bishops of Aquitaine to Charles put quickly an end to the campaign, in June 860. When Lothair I dies, in 855, Louis the German gets closer to Charles the Bald at the effect of depriving his nephews from Lotharingia as Charles takes advantage of that Louis is, in 869, ill and that his armies are campaigning in Moravia, to seize the region for himself alone! Louis the German, however, through the threat of a conflict, manages to impose to Charles the Bald the treaty of Meerssen, in 870, who eventually shares Lotharingia between them. Beginning in 861, it is the children of Louis who rebel in turn! This leads to a form of sharing of the territories of Louis in Germany, with Carloman obtaining Bavaria in 864 and the remainings of Louis's domains being, in 865, shared between Louis the Younger (who gets Saxony, Franconia and Thuringia), and Charles the Fat (who gets Swabia and Rhetia). The war was near to break again, when Louis the German died, in 876. He is interred in the abbey of Lorsch. Louis the German strongly respected an alliance with the Church and he eagerly worked for the conversion of the Pagans at the borders of his dominions. Louis the German had as a wife Hemma, the sister to his mother-in-law Judith (Hemma was the daughter to count Welf I of Bavaria; she married Louis in Regensburg; she is described like having great qualities, being greatly bold and talentuous; she was able to lead an army against a rebelled vassal; his pride however was disliked by Italians
• by the death of Louis the German, his three sons, Carloman, Louis the Younger, and Charles the Fat reigned together in a mutual comprehension as they respect the sharing of 865. Carloman (or Karlmann) (828-9/29/880) is reigning over Bavaria (when rumors of that Louis II the Younger, in Lotharingia, and detentor of the imperial dignity, had died, Louis the German tried to get the imperial crown for him). After the death of Charles the Bald, in West Francia, Carloman inherited the kingdom of Italy and he tried again to obtain the imperial crown. As striken by a heat failure, in 879, he eventually shared his lot between his own brothers, with Louis getting Bavaria, and Charles Italy. Carloman did not have any legitimate wife, as a concubine only, Liutswind, from whom he had Arnulf, giving to the latter the duchy of Carinthia and who was to become emperor one day. Louis the Younger (Louis III) (835-1/20/882), who had been allotted by Saxony and considered himself like the sole successor to his father, inherited Bavaria from Carloman, in 880. In 876, in Andernach, Louis had defeated Charles the Bald who was threatening his western borders. Lotharingia was eventually shared between him and Charles the Fat in 878. He died as soon as of 882, all his dominions passing back to Charles the Fat. He had broken the treaty of Fouron that he had signed with Louis the Stammerer in 878 and he had invaded West Francia at the latter's death, stopping the campaign however as soon as the heirs to Louis the Stammerer, Louis III and Carloman II, conceded their parts of Lotharingia to him. The treaty of Ribemont, thus, in 880, which was signed near St-Quentin, definitively created the borders between West and East Francia. Louis had a conciliatory attitude towards the magnates of East Francia as he reigned mostly from Rhineland and let Bavaria to the real power of Arnulf. It's under the reign of Louis the Younger that East Francia really became threatened by the Nordmen (Charleroi, Nijmegen, Hamburg) and Louis died along one of the campaigns he was leading against them in the Netherlands, there were a part of the large band of raiders which had been vainquished by Alfred the Great, had installed itself. As Louis the Younger had no heir, his territories were passed, in 882, to Charles the Fat, his brother. Louis the Younger had married Luitgard (c. 845-11/17/885; she had given him two children, one of them a male, Louis, who died in 879, from a fall from a palace's window; after the king's death, she married the duke of Swabia; she had a strong political influence upon Louis the Younger, encouraging, for example, his revolts against his father; Luitgard did belong to the powerful, Saxon, family of the Luidovingians, who became a relative to the Ottonians). Louis the Younger too had an illegitimate son. Under the reign of the three sons of Louis the German, the shift is made towards Italy and Provence and to West Francia as Germany tends to be parted, and the imperial crown keeps being prized
• Charles the Fat (Carolus Pinguis) (6/13/839-1/13/888, in Neudingen): he was the third of the sons of Louis the German and, as soon as the death of his father, in 876, proclaimed the sole king of East Francia, he receives Swabia and Rhetia (the current Switzerland) and he is coronated emperor on February 12th, 881 by Pope John VIII, who he helped to get protected against the duke of Spoleto. Charles the Fat governed in a mutual comprehension with is brothers, Louis and Carloman, and, when Louis the Younger dies in 882, he inherits the territories of the latter along with the one that Louis had himself inherited from Carloman, bringing to that he was in fact reunifiying all the territories that belonged to their father. This rebirth of the Carolingian empire is then triggering large hopes. Charles the Fat has an imperial palace built in Selestat, in Alsace, on the model of the one in Aachen and he endeavours himself to imitate his great ancestor, Charlemagne. Charles the Fat, in 883, still comes to the help of the pope against the people of Spoleto. Troubles do occur in the Ostmark, as led by Arnulf of Carinthia (the Greater Moravia and the Slavs, at the contrary, do support Charles and become his vassals). The Greats of West Francia, moreover, entrust him with the regency for the young Charles III, in 885, bringing to the whole reconstruction of the Empire of Charlemagne, except for Provence and Transjurane Burgundy. The power of Charles the Fat, West, however is merely nominal and the call made to him maybe comes due to that the Greats, in the West, want to legitimize their own power. As, in 885, he always has no heirs, Charles the Fat enters in a quarrel with his clerics about his will to have one of his illegitimate sons his successor and to allot him with Lotharingia. The pope is supporting Charles as he dies however en route to come to him. The illegitimate eventually is discarded by Charles to the benefit of Louis de Provence -he adopts in 887, and which has the favour of the new pope- as Charles might have willed however to allot his illegitimate with Lotharingia. All those debates, on the other hand, are taking place while the magnates are discontent with the way Charles the Fat handled the case of the siege of Paris by the Vikings in 887, as the emperor preferred to negociate. Charles indeed, when confronted to the Nordmen always had preferred to negociate, convert to the Christian faith, or have their chieftains marrying like a form of alliance. It's possible however that the way the emperor handled the Viking raids have been as much justified than fighting them militarily, as the magnates of the Empire might simply have use that like a mere pretext to advance their own interests, and, further, in the frame of the question of the succession of Charles the Fat. It is possible, so, that Charles have want to have Louis of Provence like his successor (he was the son to Ermengard, the daughter to Louis II the Younger, and of Boso) and the detentor of the imperial dignity. At that purpose, Charles the Fat called an assembly in Frankfurt, as Arnulf of Carinthia, as he was again in a rebellion, marched into eastern Germany, bringing to the desertion of most the Greats, from Charles and the emperor to be revoked, on November 17th, 887. The deed was further confirmed by the Diet of Tribur, near Mainz, on December 11th! Charles the Fat had entrusted Arnulf with the warden of his illegitimate son, Bernard, and Louis of Provence. He retired himself on a domain and he died few after. He is interred in the abbey of Reichenau. Arnulf became thus king to East Francia, as, in West Francia, those troubles allowed for the emergence of the power of the lineage of the Robertians. A part of the weakness of Charles the Fat is maybe due to a bad state of health as he was maybe too suffering of epilepsy. He had fallen victim, when a child, of a crisis of demoniac possession. Charles the Fat had had two children with concubines and he had married Richardis (c. 840-between 894 and 896; she was famous for her sanctity and she was canonized by the Church; she was from a lineage from Allemania; she was accused of adultery in 887 by the emperor and cleared herself through a trial by ordeal; she however left the court)
• Arnulf of Carinthia (Arnulf von Kämten) (c. 850-899): Arnulf is the illegitimate son of Carloman, of Bavaria and a concubine, Liutswind, of a Carinthian origin and a daughter to a count. Arnulf was granted the title of Duke of Carinthia by his father (Carinthia is in current southern Austria) as Arnulf is raised in Blatograd, a palace of Carloman, with the Carinthians -Slavic people- are considering him like their duke. He participates, in 882, into the revolt of the margrave of Pannonia against the official titular of the charge and that leads to a definitive rupture with is uncle, Charles the Fat as that leads too to that he keeps for a while to fight against the king of Moravia. Arnulf was the man behind the dismissal of Charles the Fat in 887 and he was elected king of East Francia by the magnates. This dismissal of Charles the Fat, and despite the claims of Arnulf to the whole of the power, is heralding the decline, East, of the Carolingian heritage, with parts of Germany receding back to local leaders. The Duke of Spoleto, on the other hand, who is trying to catch Italy, facing Bernard, is even stepping into those debates about the succession of Charles the Fat, in West Francia included, where he tries to oppose the choice like a king of Odo, the Robertian. Louis of Provence is settling in Provence -with the agreement of Arnulf. In Upper Burgundy, the duke Rudolf is elected a king. Odo, in West Francia, recognized Arnulf as Ranaulf II proclaims himself the king in Aquitaine and the tutor to the young Charles III. Arnulf, however, in the battle of Leuven, in September 891, puts a definitive end to the raids of the Vikings in East Francia. Most likely to avenge himself, he then turns towards Greater Moravia since 893 and until 899 as he manages there to dissociate Bohemia. The people of Spoleto having confiscated the imperial dignity, Pope Formosus, in 893, calls Arnulf to free Italy. Do follow expeditions, the death of Guy of Spoleto, the refusal by the pope to crown his son, and the pope being imprisoned. Arnulf, eventually, is managing to take Rome on February 21st, 896 and he frees the pope, who crowns him emperor on the following day. The power of Arnulf in Italy however is purely nominal and, as he is marching towards Spoleto, he falls victim of a heat failure (which might be to a poisoning by the Spoletans) and pope Formosus dies. Arnulf then goes back to Germany and he dies there in 899. Arnulf had one illegitimate son, Zwentibold (who he made king of Lotharingia in 895) as he had married Ota in 888 (or Oda, Uta; she died between 899 and 903; she was the mother to Louis the Child; she was maybe of the lineage of the Conradines and she was maybe married for the potential support his family could bring, with their domains in Bavaria and Lorraine; she was accused of adultery in 899 and she cleared herself through the sacrament of 72 noblesmen as the case did likely cause the death of Arnulf)
• Louis the Child (893, in Altöting, in Bavaria-9/20 or 24/911): he was the legitimate son of Arnulf of Carinthia. He became king at the age of 6, in February 900 as the real power in East Francia passes to the magnates and the prelates. The dismissal of Zwentibold, the illegitimate son of Arnulf who was reigning in Lotharingia, has this territory brought back to East Francia (Zwentibold had been allotted with Lotharingia where, from 895 to 900, he led a populist way of governing; he tried too to become king of West Francia, struggling against Odo, the Robertians, and Charles III). The reign of Louis the Child had the beginning of the Magyar invasions with the army of Louis defeated at the battle of the Lechfeld in 910, near Augsburg. Louis the Child did not have any heir and he died as soon as 911. It is likely that the magnates elected him for their king only due to his weakness. Through Arnulf, he had been the last ruler of the Carolingian lineage in East Francia. He was of a bad health condition. He was interred in the abbey St-Emmeram in Regensburg. Arnulf had increased the struggles between the lineages of the magnates of East Francia as the counselors of Louis the Child kept to have that policy, albeit at the benefit of their own camp
• Conrad I (Konrad) (c. 890-12/23/918 in Weilburg): he was, through a daughter of Arnulf, the grandson of the latter, thus the nephew to Louis the Child, and issued from the Franconian lineage of the Conradines, who were vassals to Arnulf. He was elected by the Greats of East Francia at the death of Louis the Child, in 911, mainly because the Greats, through that choice, wanted to show their opposition to Charles III (the Greats of Lotharingia chose the latter). The choice of the magnates of East Francia was, in any case, hinting to a refusal of a western Carolingian. The various disorders triggered by the magnates during the reign of Arnulf of Carinthia, led to an accelerated decline of the unity of East Francia. Lotharingia passed to Charles III; the grand duchies of Germany do become independent, like Bavaria, Saxony and Swabia. Conrad I tried to rest upon Church to counter those tendencies, as he didn't succeede. With no real apparent reason, he designated, at his death, like his heir, in 918, Henry, the duke of Saxony, one of his opponents. Magyars are keeping, during his reign, to be a threat to East Francia. He married, in 913, Cunigunda (who had already gave birth, from a previous marriage, to Arnulf, duke of Bavaria and who was a sister to one of Conrad's opponents; they had two children as the male died young)
• Henry I the Fowler (Henricius Auceps, Heinrich der Finkler, Heinrich der Vogler) (876, in Memleben-7/2/936, in Memleben): he was duke of Saxony as his father, with this title, had already been largely independent in his dominions, leading an independent policy towards the Slavs. His sister had married Zwentibold, the illegitimate son of Arnulf of Carinthia. His mother was a grand-grand-grand-daughter to Charlemagne, as, through his father, she was better related to Charles the Fat and the Carolingian lineage. Henry had been designated for a heir by Conrad I and he was elected by the 919 'Reichstag' of Fretzlar as he wants to take back the Carolingian tradition. He refused, on the other hand, however, to be coronated because he clearly wanted to be independent from the Church and to better be a king of sovereign chosen by his peers. He led an 'omnidirectional' policy which, however, seemed to have had the purpose to maintain the crown in his own family only. He never had a general idea of the State as, at the opposite, he considered East Francia like an assemblage of 'tribal duchies', his own duchy being one among others. He never tried too to name counts on the territories of the other dukes, who he will let rule on their dominions like they wanted, like in Franconia, Swabia, and Bavaria. He fought however the will on any autonomy by the other dukes, he retook and pacified the territories in the Danish marche, North, he contained the Slavs of the Elbe River, he intervened into Bohemia, and confiscated Lotharingia. He re-organized his army (with, among others, an elite cavalry) and he fortified the castles in the South of Germany putting thus to profit a truce of 10 years he had concluded with the Magyars, and then he vainquished them, in the battle of Riade, in 933. He inaugurated the 'Drang nach Osten', that push of the German civilization towards the Slavs. That policy eventually led to get unified all what was 'German' -or, at that time, better, East Frankish- in an unique kingdom as Henry further acquired a great fame due to his valiance at fight. He obtained from the magnates their promise that they would elect his son, Otto, like his successor. Henry I the Fowler died in 936, from a cerebrovascular stroke, in one of his favorite palace, in Memleben. He is considered like the founder of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, which was eventually to last until when Napoleon, at the beginning of the 19th century, destroyed it. His surname of 'Fowler' was due to its eagerness for hunting with hunting-birds and that the messengers charged to bring him the new he had been elected king found him as he was fixing his birding nets. He married, in 906, Hatheburga, a Saxon woman, from who he divorced in 909 (they had had a son, Thankmar, who was to be killed in 938 during a rebellion against Otto I). In 909, Henry then married St. Matilda of Ringelheim (890-968), a Westphalian Saxon woman, maybe a heir to Widuking. She was beautiful and virtuous and she gave her his successor, Otto. He was distributing almsgiving and was pious. She founded the abbey of Quedlinburg. Through his daughter Hedwige, Henry I the Fowler is grandfather to Hugh Capet, thus at the origin of the Capetians
• Otto I the Great (11/23/912, in Wallhausen-5/7/973): Otto was the son to Henry I the Fowler; like the magnates had promised to his father, they elected him like his successor in the Diet of Erfurt, in 936. He was coronated in Aachen on August 7th and anointed by the Primate of the Church in East Francia. He was 24 years old at the time and he symbolically vassalized the magnates (the dukes of the 'tribal duchies': Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria, Lorraine), making them his assistants for the coronation and, as far as the Church was concerned, already showing that he intended to have it obedient to him, like a support. In 938 further, a mine of silver was found in Rammelsberg, in Saxony, bringing to Otto determining incomes! Revolts in the kingdom are taking place until 935 as Otto, on the other hand, is taking back all the duchies of Germany to the benefit of relatives of his. Queen Matilda of Ringelheim, his mother, participated into those revolts and she was eventually dismissed from the court. Taking the opportunity of the troubles of succession in Italy, about 950, he makes the country dependent to him as Otto I eventually definitively defeats the Magyars in the battle of the Lechfeld, on August 10th, 955, near Augsburg. As he appears, thence, like the savior of Christendom, Otto I further re-founds the marches of Ostmark and Carinthia. That victory gave him a large fame at the purpose as well to claim for the imperial dignity than to intervene in the affairs of Europe (he, for example, intervened into the struggles between the Robertians and the Carolingians, in West Francia and he obtained the allegiance of the kings of Burgundy). As far as the domestic affairs in East Francia are concerned, Germany at the time was remaining a juxtaposition of ethnical duchies (Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, Bavaria, the Latin peoples, the Slavs) without an administration (no counts) as Otto I had the dukes transformed into his vassals and he wanted to use the Church like the structure of the Empire. The bishops are vested by him and they have to perform secular tasks. That system is called the 'Reichskirche' (German for 'State Church'), which is counteracting the magnates and the prelates of which are members of the family of the Ottonians, as the agents who are managing the domains of the Church, are named -or dimissed- by the emperor. In such a conception, Church gained lands and functions in the higher administration of the Empire. The Church had collapsed in East Francia indeed as it then lived under the control and abuses of the laity, and as, in Rome, the papacy itself was the subject to the struggles between the Roman lineages. The margraves, on another hand, in the marches, are the managers of those and they have coming there settlers from Germany, like from the Netherland, Franconia or Thuringia to advance the development of those regions. Otto I, like Charlemagne, inaugurated a cultural revival (with reforms of the abbeys, of them Cluny, or Gorze; he had churches and abbeys built, like St-Maurice of Magdeburg; a Ottonian art emerges, with patronages, the Carolingian influence and the one of the Late Antiquity and of Byzantium, a new spirituality, a litterature (with, for example, Bruno of Cologne, a brother to Otto, Widuking of Corvey, the 'Waltharius' by an anonymous of St-Gall, which is considered the ancestor to the chanson de geste); iluminated manuscripts are created in the scriptoria -the most famed of those being at Quedlinburg. Part of this revival, Otto I too intervened in the Roman questions and he had imposed to the cleric the 'Romano-Germanic Pontifical', a book of prayers and rituals. Notker the Physician, or Notker Labeo, at last, translated lay, or Church books into German). Otto I, on another hand, chosed Gerbert d'Aurillac, like a tutor for his son Otto II. Troubles in Italy brought Otto to intervene into Italy and, in 961, the pope proclaims him like the king of Italy and emperor, on February 2nd, 962. Otto I did advance down into Calabria where he had the peace made with the Byzantine emperor John I Tzimiskes, in 971. Otto I re-established relations with the Emirate of Cordova, in Spain. To strenghten his having become emperor, he wants to soften the Byzantine emperor and he asks him the hand of a Byzantine princess for Otto II as Byzantium, facing the renewal of the empire in Germany, did not want to recognize him. The Byzantine emperor however eventually recognized the fact in 972 and this imperial renewal in the West. As far as the pope was concerned, the coronation of Otto I like an emperor was simply the restoration of the Carolingian empire. At the occasion of the attribution to him of the empire, Otto I however did promulgate the 'Privilegium Ottonnianum', a text by which he acknowledged the Papal States on the one hand, albeit as he obliged any new pope to swear a oath of allegiance, thus placing the papacy under his tutelage. The relations between Otto and the pope swiflty turned bad, with the pope intending to reject that tutelage, even at the benefit of an alliance of Byzantium included! That brought to that the pope was deposed and replaced by Otto. Otto I kept performed the policy of the 'Drang nach Osten' as he established marches East of the Elbe River (marches of the Billung, of Oldenburg, of Nordmark, marches of the Sorbs) and he founded there the bishopric of Magdeburg, with suffrageants one in Meissen, Merseburg and Zeitz, at the effect of converting the Slavs. Mieszko I of Poland becomes his vassal in 966 and Bohemia become tributary. Otto I, at last, established the principle according to which the monarchy, in East Francia, was both hereditary and elective. He had, thus, his son Otto elected like his successor, and him coronated in Aachen in 967. Otto I had three legitimate wifes. An unknown woman, first. Then Edith, or Eadgyth, a daughter to Edward the Elder, king of Wessex and England, half-sister to King Athelstan who stretched his grip over the whole of England and maried his half-sisters to the other rulers of Europe to strengthen his stance. Edith and his younger sister Adiva were sent to Otto who had to choose between both of them. Otto maried Edith by 929. Edith introduced the cult of St. Oswald in Germany; she died in 946 at the age of 36 as she gave Otto two heirs). And, at last Adelaide of Italy, who he married in 951, as part of his struggles for the succession in Italy, where she had been the daughter, daughter-in-law and wife of the last local rulers there (she was the daughter to Rudolf II of Burgundy; she was empress in 962, with his husband; she was canonized by the Church; she had close relations with Cluny and made much for that the European medieval culture by typically catholic)
• Otto II (Otto the Red) (955-7/12/983): the son to Otto I and Adelaide of Italy, he was coronated while his father was still living, in 961 and coronated like co-emperor by the pope, in 967. He was 18 years old when his father died and he had to face revolts in Hainaut, Denmark, Bavaria, or Bohemia, and to confront himself to West Francia, when Aachen was taken, in 978. Empress Adelaide of Italy kept having a strong influence at the court and then the Greek wife of Otto eventually had her exiled in 978 (she then fled into France, as she eventually reconciled herself with her son, in 980). Otto II then intended to keep strengthening the Ottonian power in East Francia and to advance further into Italy. In Italy, he fought the Saracens, in Calabria as they had come from the Emirate of Sicily, but he nearly missed to be made a prisoner, in 982. Otto II died early, at the age of 28, as he let like his heir Otto III, who was 3 years old only (he had had Otto III recognized like his successor in 983, in Verona. Otto II was burried in the atrium of the ancient St-Peter basilica, in Rome as his remains today are in the vault of the new one. Otto II was favourable to the Church. He had had like a tutor Gerbert d'Aurillace, this bishop of southern France who had been impressed by the Arabic science in Spain. Otto II married Theophanu (Theophania, Theophana, Theophano; she was a Byzantine princess, the niepce of the Byzantine emperor John I Tzimiskes; she reigned during 11 years with Otto as she was the regent for Otto III, her son, during 7 years. Otto II and her married in 972 in the St-Peter basilica, in Rome and she was coronated empress on the same day. She was the mother to Otto III, who had had a twin sister; Theophanu died in 991; she is said to have introduced the fork in Europe; some made to her the reproach of his eastern taste for luxury. She was burried in the church St-Pantaleon of Cologne)
• Otto III (980, in Kessel, Netherlands-1/23/1002): he was the son to Otto II and he was 3 years old only when his father died. Henry the Quarrelsome, a magnate, duke of Bavaria, rebelled and allied with Lothair II, the king of France. He kidnapped Otto III in 984 to have the regency attributed to him instead of empress Theophanu (she had had the regency attributed to her when Otto III had been coronated in Aachen, after he had been elected in Verona). The archbishop of Mainz and other magnates of the Empire eventually impose the regency of Theophanu. When se died, in 991 it is Adelaide of Italy, Otto's grandmother, who assumed the regency until 995. During the troubles under Theophanu's regency, West Francia had taken the opportunity to get rid of the tutelage of East Francia as Theophanu, on the other hand, had managed to maintain the influence of the empire at the eastern borders. Gerbert d'Aurillac, with his Arabic influence -and being the friend to Adelaide of Italy- keeps being the tutor of Otto III and he became his counselor. Reaching his majority, Otto III, takes the power himself. He endeavoured to a very Catholic reign -and even very syncretist (with a mix of papacy, Byzantium, and Rome)- and a very European one, under the influence of Gerbert. In the conceptions of Otto, the pope was to be under the emperor's control, and the emperor a kind of co-pope, intermingling the temporal and spiritual powers, reigning from Rome and intending to definitively restore a 'most Christian' empire. Gerbert thus became pope, under the name of Sylvester II. Otto III performed numerous pilgrimages, as, the height of the millenarianist fears, in the year 1,000, he had the tomb of Charlemagne opened. Otto III however died young, in 1002. As he had had no heir, he is thus the last ruler of the dynasty of the Ottonians

Notes about Aquitaine, Italy, etc.

• Aquitaine: Aquitaine originated like the country of the Aquatani people, comprised between the the Garonne River, the Pyrenees and the Atlantic ocean. Aquitani were not proper Celts but more akin to Iberians of Spain and speaking an early form of the Basque language, the last surviving non-Indo-European language in western Europe. Under earlier Roman rule, the province of Aquitania stretched to North until the Loire River and included real Gauls too. By 392, the Roman empire restructured the provinve into Aquitania Prima, Aquitania Secunda and Aquitania Tertia or Novempopulania. Actual tenure of Visigoths on Aquitaine was feeble. Once the Franks vainquished over the Visigoths, Aquitania came to be distinguished between Vasconia, which was the previous Novempopulania, and Aquitaine encompassing territories between the Garonne and the Loire rivers. Aquitaine and Provence traditionally were linked to Austrasia. Merovingians established a duchy in 602 A.D. for Vasconia at the effet of better controling that march. Aquitaine also was attributed to a duke. By 660 both duchies were united and independent like a sol entity under the rule of Felix of Aquitaine, reaching his heyday under Odo the Great. The duchy became then a target to Muslim raids. In exchange for help, Odo had to pledge obedience to Charles Martel, putting a end to independence by 742 or 768 A.D. Franks mostly termed the people of Aquitaine like 'Romans' as the Basques had a significant presence too. The area was resorting to both previous duchies as a count resided in the city of Bordeaux. Charlemagne in 781 decided to have his son Louis king of Aquitaine inside the Carolingian empire as he ruled over both the duchy of Aquitania and the one of Vasconia. He tended to extend his rule too the the Basques South of the Pyrenees. The family of Seguin, last count of Bordeaux fled across and kept raising. The area kept being threatened both by Basques and Arabs under Pepin, son of Louis and new king of Aquitaine, ruling also over Vascony, Toulouse and a part of Septimania and of Burgundy, as Charles the Bald in turn became king by 821 but challenged by a candidate elected by local Aquitanian and Vascon lords and the Basques. Thence Aquitaine tended to render itself independent since about 870, under the rule of Bernard Plantevelue and then his son William I, who proclaimed themselves duke of Aquitaine. That turned into the dynasty of the counts of Poitiers terming themselves Duke of Aquitaine from the 10th to the 12th century, as their court is renowned for the troubadours cultural movement. That duchy passed back to France with duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine when se married Louis VII of France by 1137. With their marriage annulled in 1152 and Eleanor marrying Henry II of England in 1154, the area became an English possession until the end of the Hundred Years’ War, also named Guyenne
• Italy: in the Carolingian meaning of the term, Italy is the former Lombard kingdom, North of the Papal States, the ruler of which is entitled to the 'Iron Crown'. In southern Italy, such states like the duchies of Benevento and Spoleto are remaining tributary states, more or less prone to rebellion, as Byzantium too is holding some possessions there. The Saracens, on the other hand, installed there too, and in Sicily (in 827; those were people from the Aghlabid dynasty; they pillaged Rome, in 846, bringing to the construction of the Leonine City by Pope Leo IV). More or less independent enclaves are found too, like Gaeta, Amalfi, Naples, or Venice. Following what he had done for Aquitaine or Neustria, Charlemagne allots Italy to his son Pepin I (777-810) and then, in 806, in the perspective of the sharing of the empire, he confirms Italy to him. That share passed then to Bernard, the son of Pepin and Italy, then, was passed to the share of Lothair by the treaty of Verdun, in 843. In turn, when Lothair shared his territories, Italy passed to Louis II the Younger, one of his sons. Keeping be troubled by varied disorders, sometimes in link with the kingdoms of Provence or Burgundy, Italy, which, in any case, was remaining there where Rome was, hence the pope, definitively passed into the area of influence of the Ottonians, in 951
• Burgundy: a land of Celtic tribes, then of the Gallo-Romans, that region lying from about the Geneval Lake to the Massif Central and from North of Dijon to low into the Rhone River valley, was used to settle the Burgundians, a Germanic people at the time of the Great Invasions like foederati. They formely had settled a kingdom of their own by Worms, Germany since about 411 A.D. as they enduerd repeated clashes with the Huns. Burgundians eventually settled in a large territory in the broad southeast of Gauls. The peculiarism of that Burgundian kingdom based upon a tolerant policy of inter-ethnic harmony. Subdued then by the Franks by the 534 A.D. the area of Burgundians, 'Burgundy' soon came to be considered reunited with Austrasia, one of the kingdoms born from the succession to king Clovis and his heirs.' The area, under the Carolingians, comprises the following territories: Lower Burgundy (at West of the Saône River), Upper Burgundy (North of the Jura Mountains), Transjurane Burgundy (current Switzerland) and Cisjurane Burgundy (Lyonnais, Viennois, Dauphiné, and Savoy). The treaty of Verdun, in 843, gave Lower Burgundy to Charles the Bald and all the other territories to Lothair I. At the death of the latter, in 855, his territories, there, are parted like, between his heirs: the Lower Burgundy, with the Transjurane Burgundy are passed to Lothair II; the Cisjurane Burgundy to Charles and the kingdom of Provence. The possessions of Charles, in 863, are passed to his brother, Louis II the Younger, emperor, and, at the death of him, in 875, Charles the Bald takes Italy and of this kingdom of Provence too. Burgundy, then is rattached to the Bosonids' Provence, since 879, as one Rudolf I renders himself independent, in 888, in the Transjurane or Upper Burgundy where he had been a duke. That dominion was a distinctly non-Carolingian creation, and probably the result of the failure of the Duke to succeed in the whole of Lotharingia, after the deposition of Charles the Fat. Like Louis the Blind, Rudolf I participates into Italian adventures. Upper and Lower Burgundy (at that time, the latter term designates Provence) are then alternating independency and tutelage. The two kingdoms of Upper (around Geneva Lake) and Lower Burgundy or Provence were reunited in 937 and absorbed into the Holy Roman Empire under Conrad II in 1032, like the Kingdom of Arles. The lower Burgundy, West of the Saone River which had turned into the Duchy of Burgundy was annexed by the French throne in 1004 as, East of the Saone River, the County of Burgundy remained loosely associated with the Holy Roman Empire earning its name 'Franche-Comté', litterally 'free county' until in 1678. After the kingdom of Boso, Burgundy West of the Saône river passed to his brother Richard, who was said 'Richard the Wrongsrighter' as he originally was count of Autun and he was to bring to Robertians, the next Capetians. As he was already a Great among the local Greats, he efficiently fighted against the Northmen during the last decade of the 9th century A.D. Other counts of Burgundy accepted his authority and he had himself called duke, or prince. Carolingians however just considered him a marquis only. When he married Adelaïde, he also got the Nivernais, Auxerrois and Sénonais. He got closer to the count of Chalon to reinforce his links with Burgundy, as the latter was Manasses, lord of Vergy, who had maried a daughter of Boso. Richard the Wrongsrighter was also to extend his reach unto Langres, who was then belonging to the countal clan of the 'Milonides.' He could do that due to the weakening of the bishopric of Langres under Geilo (archbishop Foulques of Reims, who was belonging to that clan, upheld, in 888 A.D. by the death of Charles the Fat, Gui of Spoleto like a contender to the crown of Francia occidentalis against Eudes, a son to Robert the Strong and Gui was illegally crowned by Geilo in the cathedral of Langres. Geilo thus was discredited). Richard the Wrongsrighter, by the year 900, had turned a quasi vice-king. He was succeded by his son Raul in 921 A.D. but Raul soon was elected king of Francia as soon as by 923 in replacement of Charles the Straightforward and the duchy of Burgundy passed to his brother Hugh, or Hugh the Black. As Carolingians were back to the crown with Louis Transmarinus then was the prelude only to the definitive rise of the Robertians at a time when Hugh the Great, father to Hugh Capet, had become duke of France and Aquitaine. Burgundy self, by 950 A.D. passed to a Robertians, duke Otto (who died by 965) then to his brother Henry (he died in 1002 as his son Otto-Wilhelm was the ruler of Franche-Comté under the Holy Roman Empire). Some time before, about 930 A.D., Burgundy had endured Magyar raiders, which had impoverished the duchy. The capital city of Burgundy has passed to Beaune. During the Middle Ages, Burgundy was the seat of some of the most important Western monastic orders, like Cluny and Cîteaux. Burgundy, like other areas of the Carolingian empire, was a land of antique castles, the walls of which could date back to the prehistorical times, the roman era or the Merovingian times. Most of the time, such fortresses were vast enclosures in stone as they had been built atop natural, or artificial high ground. A unique door was fortified, surrounded with two circular, Roman-styled towers and a ditch was adding to defense. Such sites became used back during the troubled times of the Carolingian era. Another way to protect oneself, at the time, was to built upon the main, stone building of a domain. They buried that under a gigantic mound of earth -which is called a 'feudal mound'- as a wooden wall was erected at the top as the old rooms of the original building eventually had become cellars. Such wooden fortresses, when the disorders increased by the very end of the period, were turned into usual, stone, Middle Ages castles. As far as the first kind of castles is concerned, several successive walls were built, with the first one harboring the neighbouring peasants, the second one -which was called the 'lower court'- granges and stables as the third was a one-stage dungeon, and dedicated to the living quarters of the landlords and his vassals. Further walls might be built, up to 5 at a same site! Such castles, after that, during the Middle Ages, gave eventually birth to small cities or large boroughs, like in Burgondy, Montbard, Charolles, or Semur-en-Brionnais. Those first 'feudal' families which had appeared during the decline of the Carolingians, often lasted until into the middle of the 13th century. Much of those Burgundian castles, in the southern part of the region, were swiftly linked to the development of the abbey of Cluny. By the time of the Viking invasions, Burgundy, like the provinces of Berry and Auvergne, turned a place of refuge to the monasteries which dwelled in the infested regions (by about 900 A.D., new threats in Brittany brought to a new exode to the neighbourhoods of Paris as the city was resisting against the Northmen at the time) (note! a detailed description of Burgundy under the Carolingians is available (unluckily in French only), in the French-speaking part of the site; check at 'La Bourgogne sous les Carolingiens' (no link back))
• Provence: the area was inhabited by several megalithic people, of those the bronze age Ligures between the 10th and 4th century B.C. as iron age Celtic tribes moved in between the 8th and 5th centuries, coming to the formation of the Celto-Ligure population each living around one oppida or natural fortress and later, in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. forming confederations. After Etruscan traders visited the region, the Greeks eventually established settlements by the 6th century as Massalia, current day Marseille, became one of the major trading ports of the ancient world, establishing route until into northern Europe. People of Massalia called Romans to help against the Ligures by 181 B.C. as Romans eventually decided to also establish permanent settlements of their own. The area by 100 B.C., with the shores of the Mediteranean West of Marseille served like a passage from Italy to Spain. It is Emperor Augustus who definitively romanized Provence, with capital Narbo Martius, modern Narbonne. The Roman province was called Gallia Transalpina, then Gallia Narbonensis, or simply Provincia Nostra ('Our Province') or Provincia, hence Provence, extending from the Alps to the Pyrenees and North to the Vaucluse. Gallo-Roman Provence, like the Roman empire, vanished under the Great Invasions with the Visigoths in 480 then the Ostrogoths and the Burgundians. The area passed under Frankish rule in the 6th century as it endured raids of Arab invaders or Berber pirates in the beginning of the 7th century, leading to a chaotic period. Provence, like Aquitaine, was traditionally linked to Austrasia. Nominally under the rule of Merovingians then the Carolingians, Provence became allotted, through the treaty of Verdun, in 843, to Lothair I who passed it to his son, Charles, who transformed it into the kingdom of Provence-Viennois, or kingdom of Cisjurane Burgundy, which lasted between 855 and 863 only. Girart of Roussillon, count of Paris under Louis the Pioux, and then proponent of Lothar, he turned, by 853, duke of Lyons and Vienna and then regent to that kingdom. As he hold lands in northern Burgundy, he might have founded there with his wife Bertha, two abbeys, the one of Pothières and the one of Vézelay. Girart was later the heroe to a romance. A concerted attack of Arabs in Spain, Aghlabids and Idrissites in Provence had them to build there a large number of fortresses and castles. They took Marseille, Avignon, Arles, and Saint-Tropez. They established themselves at the top of a high montain named Fraxinet. By the treaty of Meerssen, in 870, this kingdom is then passed to Louis the Younger, as emperor, and, in 875, at his death, to his uncle, Charles the Bald. In 879, after the death of Charles the Bald, Boso of Provence, (also known as Boson), his brother-in-law, broke away from the Carolingian kingdom of Louis III and was elected the first ruler of an independent state. Boso was the son to Beuve, count of Ardennes as his mother maried count Eccard, possessioned in Burgondy, in second. His sister, about 870 A.D., maried Emperor Charles le Chauve in second which awarded Boson and his brothers with high honors in Lotharingia, Italy and then Francia where Boson turned counselor to Charles' son, King Louis the Stammerer (877-879). Boson then was turned off from the court at the death of Louis by struggling factions and he was satisfied with his wide dominions. He ruled southern Burgundy, his heritage, Lyons and Vienne he had taken from Girart of Roussillon in 871 and Provence he had conquered by 877. In fact, to be a king, Boson just lacked the appropriate legitimacy! That came from pope John VIII who asked in 878 for help against the Saracen pirats in Italy and Rome. The pope recognized Boson thus a Great in Europe, who was acclaimed King of Burgundy and Provence in October 879 at the meeting of Mantailles (current French department of the Drôme) by bishops and the Greats. The deed was reconstituting, the area of Sens excepted, the old Burgundian kingdom, the antique 'Sapaudia.' With his capital in Vienne, Boson took the title of 'Patrice.' Boso's kingdom eventually declined not due to Carolingians who had turned weak but from the wills of independency of his own Greats. When Boso died by 887 A., a first dynasty of counts, the Bosonids (879–1112), were his descendants. His son, Louis the Blind (890–928) lost his sight trying to win the throne of Italy (as Charles the Fat seems to have wanted, for a while, him like his successor), after which his cousin, Hugh of Italy (died 947) became the Duke of Provence and the Count of Vienne, moving the capital of Provence from Vienne to Arles as Provence turned a fief of Rudolph II of Burgundy, king of Transjurane Burgundy, forming thus the second kingdom of Burgundy-Provence, or the kingdom of Arles, lasting until 1032. 9th century was both a time of Arab and Nordmen piracy. As Nordmen raided from the Rhone River delta, Arabs only remained in the area as they built castles, raiding and ransoming population. Early 973, the Saracen pirats went as far North as Cluny, holding Abbot Maieul for ransom. The people of Provence then rose up as led by Count William I and defeated the Saracens near their most powerful fortress Fraxinetum (La Garde-Freinet) at the Battle of Tourtour. The Saracens who had not been killed were baptized and made into slaves as other Saracens in Provence fled. A Boso, in 947, took power in the region, as his two sons then organized the kingdom into two lineages, the one of the counts of Provence, and of the counts of Forcalquier. Provence, after a feud between Rudolph III of Burgundy and German Emperor Conrad the Salic in 1032 became a fief to the Holy Roman Empire. Provence since was a prize in the complex rivalries between varied dynasties like the Catalan rulers of Barcelona or the Angevin Kings of France. In the 5th century A.D. Lérins, on an island near Cannes and Saint-Victor in Marseille were the two first monasteries in Provence as Avignon became the residence of popes during the Great Western Schims, from 1309 to 1377