Slogun cald isarn
They drove cold iron
hardo mit hamuron
hard with hammers
thuru is hendi enti thuru is fuoti;
through his hands and through his feet;
is blod ran an ertha.
his blood ran on earth.
This separation of the languages is a sign of the difference in national character which now split asunder the great empire of Charlemagne. Lothar, after the solemn alliance between Karl the Bald and Ludwig, resorted to desperate measures. He offered to give the Saxons their old laws and even to allow them to return to their pagan faith, if they would support his claims; he invited the Norsemen to Belgium and Northern France; and, by retreating towards Italy when his brothers approached him in force, and then returning when an opportunity favored, he disturbed and wasted the best portions of the Empire. Finally the Bishops intervened, and after a long time spent in negotiations, the three rival brothers met in 843, and agreed to the famous "Partition of Verdun" (so called from Verdun, near Metz, where it was signed), by which the realm of Charlemagne was divided among them.
843. SEPARATION OF GERMANY AND FRANCE.
Lothar, as the eldest, received Italy, together with a long, narrow strip of territory extending to the North Sea, including part of Burgundy, Switzerland, Eastern Belgium and Holland. All west of this, embracing the greater part of France, was given to Karl the Bald; all east, with a strip of territory west of the Rhine, from Basle to Mayence, "for the sake of its wine," as the document stated, became the kingdom of Ludwig, who was thenceforth called "The German." The last-named also received Eastern Switzerland and Bavaria, to the Alps. This division was almost as arbitrary and unnatural as that which Pippin the Short attempted to make. Neither Karl's nor Ludwig's shares included all the French or German territory; while Lothar's was a long, narrow slice cut out of both, and attached to Italy, where a new race and language were already developed out of the mixture of Romans, Goths and Lombards. In fact, it became necessary to invent a name for the northern part of Lothar's dominions, and that portion between Burgundy and Holland was called, after him, Lotharingia. As Lothringen in German, and Lorraine in French, the name still remains in existence.
Each of the three monarchs received unrestricted sway over his realm. They agreed, however, upon a common line of policy in the interest of the dynasty, and admitted the right of inheritance to each other's sovereignty, in the absence of direct heirs. The Treaty of Verdun, therefore, marks the beginning of Germany and France as distinct nationalities; and now, after following the Germanic races over the greater part of Europe for so many centuries, we come back to recommence their history on the soil where we first found them. In fact, the word Deutsch, "German," signifying of the people, now first came into general use, to designate the language and the races—Franks, Alemanni, Bavarians, Thuringians, Saxons, etc.—under Ludwig's rule. There was, as yet, no political unity among these races; they were reciprocally jealous, and often hostile; but, by contrast with the inhabitants of France and Italy, they felt their blood-relationship as never before, and a national spirit grew up, of a narrower but more natural character than that which Charlemagne endeavored to establish.
Internal struggles awaited both the Roman Emperor, Lothar, and the Frank king, Karl the Bald. The former was obliged to suppress revolts in Provence and Italy; the latter in Brittany and Aquitaine, while the Spanish Mark, beyond the Pyrenees, passed out of his hands. Ludwig the German inherited a long peace at home, but a succession of wars with the Wends and Bohemians along his eastern frontier. The Norsemen came down upon his coasts, destroyed Hamburg, and sailed up the Elbe with 600 vessels, burning and plundering wherever they went. The necessity of keeping an army almost constantly in the field gave the clergy and nobility an opportunity of exacting better terms for their support; the independent dukedoms, suppressed by Charlemagne, were gradually re-established, and thus Ludwig diminished his own power while protecting his territory from invasion.
858.
The Emperor, Lothar, soon discovered that he had made a bad bargain. His long and narrow empire was most difficult to govern, and in 855, weary with his annoyances and his endless marches to and fro, he abdicated and retired into a monastery, where he died within a week. The empire was divided between his three sons: Ludwig received Italy and was crowned by the Pope; to Karl was given the territory between the Rhone, the Alps and the Mediterranean, and to Lothar II. the portion extending from the Rhone to the North Sea. When the last of these died, in 869, Ludwig the German and Karl the Bald divided his territory, the line running between Verdun and Metz, then along the Vosges, and terminating at the Rhine near Basle,—almost precisely the same boundary as that which France has been forced to accept in 1871.
But the conditions of the oath taken by the two kings in 842 were not observed by either. Karl the Bald was a tyrannical and unpopular sovereign, and when he failed in preventing the Norsemen from ravaging all Western France, the nobles determined to set him aside and invite Ludwig to take his place. The latter consented, marched into France with a large army, and was hailed as king; but when his army returned home, and he trusted to the promised support of the Frank nobles, he found that Karl had repurchased their allegiance, and there was no course left to him but to retreat across the Rhine. The trouble was settled by a meeting of the two kings, which took place at Coblentz, in 860.
Ludwig the German had also, like his father, serious trouble with his sons, Karlmann and Ludwig. He had made the former Duke of Carinthia, but ere long discovered that he had entered into a conspiracy with Rastitz, king of the Moravian Slavonians. Karlmann was summoned to Regensburg (Ratisbon), which was then Ludwig's capital, and was finally obliged to lead an army against his secret ally, Rastitz, who was conquered. A new war with Zwentebold, king of Bohemia, who was assisted by the Sorbs, Wends, and other Slavonic tribes along the Elbe, broke out soon afterwards. Karlmann led his father's forces against the enemy, and after a struggle of four years forced Bohemia, in 873, to become tributary to Germany.