The Dark Ages, 476-918

by Charles Oman

PARTITION-TREATY OF VERDUN
843.

|Treaty of Verdun, 843.| Examining the boundaries fixed by the treaty of Verdun, we find the Frankish empire divided into three long strips running from north to south. In the east Lewis of Bavaria took all the Teutonic lands east of the Rhine—Saxony, Thuringia, Bavaria, Suabia, and the suzerainty over the Slavs of the Elbe and Save. He had also one small tract of Austrasian territory west of the Rhine, the gaus of Speier, Worms, and Mainz. Lothair kept his old kingdom of Italy, together with a long narrow strip of territory reaching from the mouth of the Rhone to the mouths of the Rhine and Yssel. This strip consisted of Frisia, the bulk of Austrasia, the most of Burgundy, and Provence. Charles took the western kingdoms of Neustria and Aquitaine, with the Spanish March and western Burgundy, for his kinsman Pippin was abandoned to his mercy by the emperor, and the lands south of the Loire, as well as those north, were put into his share of the empire.

Two of these realms, those of Charles and Lewis, roughly corresponded to national unities. The eastern kingdom comprised all the Teutonic districts of the empire, except Austrasia. The western, formed by the union of Neustria and Aquitaine, was the first foreshadowing of the modern kingdom of France, comprising as it did the bulk of the Romance districts of the empire, where the Teutonic element had always been small, and was of late growing less and less prominent. But Lothair’s kingdom was an unnatural and unwieldy aggregation of districts connected neither by blood, by language, nor by historical ties. Its shape seems to have been determined merely by the wish to give the emperor both the imperial cities—Rome and Aachen—together with a strip of soil conveniently connecting them. The Teutonic Austrasians, the Romance-speaking Burgundians, and the Italian Lombards were in no wise fitted for union with each other, and were certain to drift apart, alike from geographical and from national reasons. They only adhered to each other for one man’s life, and fell asunder the moment that he died.

For the future we shall find the wide realm of Charles the Great constantly tending to minute sub-division. The connection between east and west, north and south, grows constantly less, and ere long we shall be compelled to tell of the fortunes of the different fractions of the empire in separate chapters, since the central cord of connection formed by the kingly power has finally snapped. But as long as the generation of the sons of Lewis the Pious survives, there is still a certain interdependence between the history of the Eastern and Western Franks, and it is not till the deposition of Charles the Fat, in 887, that the elements of dissolution finally triumph, and all ideas of the reunion of the empire are finally discredited.

In 843 commences the tripartite government of Lothair the emperor, and his two brothers, whom we may for the future style by their well-known names of Lewis the German and Charles the Bald, though the latter style can hardly yet have been appropriate to the Neustrian king, who had only just celebrated his twenty-first birthday. His elder brothers were now much older men, Lothair having attained his forty-fourth and Lewis his thirty-eighth year. Both of them had now growing sons whom they were ere long to take as colleagues in part of their realm.

The period from the Peace of Verdun, in 843, down to the deposition of Charles the Fat, in 887, is the most chaotic and perplexing portion of the history of Europe with which we have to deal. For the fortunes of the various fractions of the Frankish empire are bound up with the fortunes of the members of a much-ramified royal house in which—with a lamentable want of originality—the same four names are continually recurring. |The grandsons of Lewis the Pious.| We have hitherto been confronted only with the three brothers—Lothair, Lewis, and Charles. Now each of these brothers had three sons, and with a perversity which the reader and the writer of history must alike deplore, each christened his boys after their uncles. Lothair’s three sons were Lewis, Charles, and Lothair; Lewis named his offspring Lewis, Charles, and Carloman; and Charles, when at a later date he became a father, followed the evil example by christening his children Lewis, Charles, and Carloman also. The genealogical table must be kept carefully before us, lest from the similarity of names we confuse the imperial, the German, and the Neustrian houses of the Karlings.

THE DESCENDANTS OF CHARLES THE GREAT.

The dates of the reigns of the three contentious brothers were, for Lothair 843-855, for Lewis 843-876, for Charles 843-877. When they had settled down after the Peace of Verdun, they found two problems before them. The first was that of keeping the peace with each other, in spite of all the grudges which the events of the last fifteen years had raised between them. The second was that of defending Western Christendom from the assaults from without, which were daily growing more and more dangerous. The Danes, whose first ravages we have related under the reign of Lewis the Pious, were now becoming no longer a mere pest to the coastland, but a serious danger to the whole empire. The Saracens were commencing a series of daring piratical descents on Provence and Italy. The Slavs beyond the Elbe were gradually throwing off their allegiance to the empire, and recommencing the raids on Germany, from which they had been stayed by Charles the Great.

For ten years (843-53) the three kings succeeded—contrary to all expectation—in keeping the peace with each other. But in spite of their temporary freedom from civil strife, they did not succeed in defending their realms with success from the outer barbarian. As the chronicler observed, ‘the slaughter of Fontenay seemed not only to have thinned the ranks of the Frankish host, but to have robbed them of their ancient invincibility in war.’ The only one of the three kings who showed the slightest power to defend his borders was Lewis the German: his two brothers suffered one continual series of checks and disasters.