Treaty of Verdun

In August 843, at Verdun, three grandsons of Charlemagne agreed to split his empire between them, ending a bitter civil war. Lothair I took a long middle kingdom running from the North Sea to Italy, Louis the German took the lands east of the Rhine, and Charles the Bald took the west. The settlement, concluded on 10 August after more than a year of negotiation, began the break-up of the Carolingian Empire, and its eastern and western kingdoms are often seen as early forerunners of Germany and France.

When Charlemagne died, his son Louis the Pious inherited the whole Frankish realm. Following Frankish custom, Louis repeatedly divided his lands among his sons, each ruling a kingdom under his overall authority. His eldest, Lothair, was named co-emperor in 817, but successive re-divisions in favour of his younger brothers, and the revolts these provoked, steadily eroded his position. Some churchmen, such as Agobard, archbishop of Lyon, opposed dividing the empire at all.

Louis the Pious died in 840. Lothair then claimed authority over the entire empire and backed his nephew Pepin II's claim to Aquitaine. His brother Louis, ruling Bavaria, and his half-brother Charles, based in Aquitaine, refused to accept his supremacy and went to war. In 841 they defeated Lothair in a bloody battle at Fontenoy, and in 842 they confirmed their alliance with the Oaths of Strasbourg, declaring Lothair unfit to be emperor. Lothair, beaten, agreed to negotiate.

Each brother already held a base: Lothair in Italy, Louis in Bavaria and Charles in Aquitaine. Under the treaty, Lothair kept the imperial title, though it gave him only nominal authority over his brothers' lands. He received Middle Francia, a long strip covering the Low Countries, the Rhineland west of the Rhine, Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy, Provence and northern Italy, including both imperial cities, Aachen and Rome. Louis received East Francia, the lands east of the Rhine and north and east of Italy. Charles received West Francia, broadly the lands west of the Rhône, with Pepin II allowed to rule Aquitaine under him.

The division followed the Frankish practice of sharing an inheritance among sons rather than passing it to the eldest. The middle kingdom proved the weakest of the three. Long, exposed borders and poor communications across the Alps made it hard to hold together, and after Lothair's death in 855 it was split again among his sons. Italy and the imperial claim went to Louis II, Burgundy and Provence to Charles of Provence, and the northern lands to Lothair II, after whom they were named Lotharingia, a name that survives in today's Lorraine. Verdun was the first of four Carolingian partition treaties, followed by those of Prüm in 855, Meerssen in 870 and Ribemont in 880. Only Charles the Fat later managed briefly to reunite Charlemagne's lands.

East Francia developed into the medieval Kingdom of Germany, the largest part of the Holy Roman Empire, while West Francia became the Kingdom of France. The two powers that grew from them disputed the old middle lands for centuries. Alsace-Lorraine in particular changed hands repeatedly: Alsace was largely taken by France in the 17th century and Lorraine passed to it in 1766; the region was annexed by Germany after the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, returned to France under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, was annexed by Germany again in 1940 and has been French since 1945. The collapse of the middle kingdom also contributed to the long political division of Italy, which lasted into the 19th century.

Our 800 map shows the united Carolingian Empire under Charlemagne, and the 900 map shows East and West Francia as separate kingdoms, the outlines of later Germany and France.