Karl Bald, Ludwig German, Lothar. Treaty of Verdun


Although Charlemagne seems to have done everything to strengthen his state, it still proved to be unviable. He was weakened by rebellious feudal lords, whom the emperor had to force to submit to obedience. And most importantly, the tribes and peoples who inhabited the empire lived on their own and did not want to obey the French conquerors.

In 814, 71-year-old Charlemagne, as the English say, “joined the majority” – died. Shortly before his death, he divided the empire between his sons, thereby signing her death sentence. Sons, who could not wait to get to power, buried his father on the day of his death. They did not tear the empire apart because only two of them died suddenly. But what his sons did not manage to do with the state, his grandchildren successfully completed. In 843, these “koroloks” gathered in Verdun and there they shared an empire. Under the terms of the Treaty of Verdun, one of them, Karl Lysy, received in the west almost the entire territory of the future France. His middle brother, Louis German, got to the east the territory of the future Germany. The elder brother, Lothar, acquired an imperial title, mostly Italy and a narrow strip of land along the Rhine. “The State of the Lothar” was for centuries an apple of discord between France and Germany, until they divided it among themselves. So the Treaty of Verdun laid the foundation for the formation of three Western European states – France, Germany and Italy and, accordingly, three peoples: the French, Germans and Italians.

Historians do not shed tears over the death of the Carolingian empire. They consider it doomed by history itself. By its fall, it caused a more harmonious political development of Western Europe.


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Karl Bald, Ludwig German, Lothar. Treaty of Verdun