West Francia

West Francia, the kingdom of the West Franks, was the western share of the Carolingian Empire, created in 843 and lasting until 987, when Hugh Capet became king. It is usually treated as the first stage of the medieval Kingdom of France. Over its century and a half the crown passed between Carolingians and the rising Robertian family, while real power drained away to regional dukes and counts.

After the death of Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne, his three sons fought a civil war for three years. The Treaty of Verdun in August 843 split the empire: Lothair kept the middle kingdom and the imperial title, Louis the German took the east, which became East Francia, and the youngest, Charles the Bald, received the west. In the words of the West Frankish Annals of Saint-Bertin, the brothers ceded to Charles "the rest as far as Spain". The kingdom reached further north and south than modern France but not as far east, leaving out Lorraine, Alsace and Provence, and the Brittany peninsula lay outside it.

Charles spent his early years fighting his nephew Pippin II for Aquitaine, securing most of it by 849, when he was crowned and anointed at Orléans, the first royal anointing in West Francia. Archbishop Hincmar of Reims shaped the ceremonies and ideas of kingship around him. The Treaty of Meerssen in 870 added the western part of Lotharingia, and in 875 Charles was crowned emperor. Viking raids, however, struck repeatedly along the rivers and coasts, and attempts to pay off the raiders encouraged more attacks.

After Charles died in 877 his successors reigned only briefly. In 888 the nobles elected Odo, Count of Paris, son of Robert the Strong, beginning six decades in which Carolingian and Robertian candidates were chosen in turn. Kingship became largely elective, and great territorial principalities, Burgundy, Aquitaine, Gascony, Flanders, Normandy and others, grew semi-independent. Charles the Simple, a Carolingian, won the allegiance of Lotharingia after the last Carolingian king of East Francia died in 911, and in that year he also made the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, granting coastal land to the Viking leader Rollo in return for loyalty; this became the Duchy of Normandy. In 922 rebellious magnates deposed Charles and elected Robert I, and after Robert's death in 923 they chose Rudolf, keeping Charles a prisoner until he died in 929. From 919 Hungarian raiders also struck the kingdom.

Louis IV, king from 936, struggled against powerful nobles such as Herbert II of Vermandois and Hugh the Great, whom he had made "duke of the Franks", and lost Lotharingia to Otto I in 942. His son Lothair, who came to the throne at thirteen, attacked Aachen in 978; Otto II struck back at Paris but was driven off, and peace followed in 980. By then the royal lands were so small that they were no longer divided among sons.

After Lothair and his son Louis V had both died early, the magnates elected Hugh Capet in 987. The Carolingian line in the west ended, and the new Capetian house, though at first holding little beyond the Île-de-France, ruled the kingdom through the High Middle Ages. West Francia thus became the Kingdom of France, and the Latin name for the realm gradually changed from the kingdom of the Franks to the kingdom of France.

Our 900 map draws West Francia beside East Francia, in the lands of today's France with a strip of north-eastern Spain around Barcelona. It follows the Carolingian Empire of 800 and is succeeded by the Kingdom of France on the 1000 map.