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| Eventual partition of the Empire of Louis I the Pious by his sons at the Treaty of Verdun (843), following a 3-year civil war in the wake of Louis' death. |
His 26-year reign was marked by great internal division and civil war among the Franks.
His kingdom to be divided among his four sons.
840: Death of Louis I the Pious (b. 778), King of Franks, also known as
Louis Ier dit « le Pieux » (parfois « le Débonnaire »)
Ludwig I. (genannt Ludwig der Fromme, französisch Louis le Pieux
Ludovico I, detto Ludovico il Pio o Luigi I, in francese è Louis le Pieux o Louis le Débonnaire (il Benevolo), in tedesco è Ludwig der Fromme.
Lodewijk de Vrome (Chasseneuil bij Poitiers, 11 april 778 – Ingelheim am Rhein, 20 juni 840), ook wel de Eerlijke en de Joviale
Ludovicus Pius, filius imperatoris Caroli Magni,
"Louis fell ill soon after his final victorious campaigns in 840 and went to his summer hunting lodge on an island in the Rhine, by his palace at Ingelheim. On 20 June 840, he died, at the old age of 62, in the presence of many bishops and clerics and in the arms of his half-brother Drogo, though Charles and Judith were absent in Poitiers. Soon dispute plunged the surviving brothers into a civil war that was only settled in 843 by the Treaty of Verdun, which split the Frankish realm into three parts, to become the kernels of France and Germany, with Burgundy and the Low Countries between them. The dispute over the kingship of Aquitaine was not fully settled until 860. Louis was buried in the Abbey of Saint-Arnould in Metz.
The life of Louis I is described in Vita Hludovici. "The work was written in Latin in or soon after AD 840 by an anonymous author who is conventionally called Astronomus , the Astronomer. This is due to his many detailed comments on astronomical matters in the work upon which he describes himself as "one credited with having knowledge of this subject." He held office at the court of Louis I the Pious, and his cultural and religious references suggest that he was not a churchman. It has been conjectured, based on evidence within the text, that the author was born around AD 800 and that his nationality was not Gothic or Frankish. The author's attitude to his subject is clearly subordinate and one of admiration, yet he does not idealise Louis in the same way as, for example, Einhard does in his Life of Charlemagne. It has been suggested that the author exhibits a degree of disapproval towards clerics and the workings of the Frankish Church, lending weight to the view that he was not formally connected to the Church. Nevertheless, the most popular recent ideas (see below) do identify him as a cleric."
c. 840: Death of Einhard, author of the Life of Charles the Great.
840 Louis I the Pious, after restoring his son in Aquitaine, "in a final flash of glory, rushed into Bavaria and forced his son, the younger Louis (the German), into the Ostmark (eastern half of his empire). The empire now settled as he had declared it at Worms, he returned in July to Frankfurt am Main, where he disbanded the army."
840 Louis I the Pious invades Aquaitaine , forces the nobles and clergy of to recognize his fourth Charles the Bald as king in favor of his grandson Pepin II. "The emperor quickly subjugated Aquitaine and had Charles recognised by the nobles and clergy at Clermont-en-Auvergne."
839: Louis I the Pious orders the construction of a North Sea fleet and the sending of missi dominici into Frisia to establish Frankish sovereignty there.
838:Vikings claim sovereignty over Frisia, but a treaty was confirmed between them and the Franks
838: Louis' second son Pepin dies. Louis declares his fourth son Charles (the Bald) the new king of Aquitaine. "The nobles, however, elected Pepin's son Pepin II. When Louis threatened invasion, the third great civil war of his reign broke out. In the spring of 839, Louis the German invaded Swabia, Pepin II and his Gascon subjects fought all the way to the Loire, and the Danes returned to ravage the Frisian coast (sacking Dorestad for a second time). His oldest son Lothair, for the first time in a long time, allied with his father and pledged support at Worms in exchange for a redivision of the inheritance. At a final placitum held there, Louis gave Bavaria to his third son Louis the German and disinherited his grandson Pepin II, leaving the entire remainder of the empire to be divided roughly into an eastern part and a western. Lothair was given the choice of which partition he would inherit and he chose the eastern, including Italy, leaving the western for Charles the Bald."
837 Vikings sail up the Rhine as far as Nijmegen, and their king, Rorik, demanded the wergild of some of his followers killed on previous expeditions before Louis the Pious mustered a massive force and marched against them.
837 Louis I the Pious crowns his (fourth) son Charles the Bald king over all of Alemannia and Burgundy and gave him a portion of his brother Louis' land. Louis the German promptly rose in revolt, and the emperor redivided his realm again at Quierzy-sur-Oise, giving all of the young king of Bavaria's lands, save Bavaria itself, to Charles.
836-7 Gesta Hludovici Imperatoris ("The Deeds of Emperor Louis"). Thegan of Trier. "a principal source for the life of the Holy Roman Emperor Louis the Pious, the son and successor of Charlemagne. Very little is known of Thegan's life; he appears to have come from a noble Frankish family in the middle Rhine-Moselle region. He may have been educated at Lorsch. All that is certain is that by 825 he was auxiliary bishop of Trier and probably praepositus of the monastery of St. Cassius in Bonn. He was also a warm friend of Walafrid Strabo, who was the earliest editor of Thegan's Gesta and divided it into chapters, just as he did with Einhard's Vita Karoli. Walafrid also gave it the name by which it is known: Gesta et Laudes ("Deeds and Praise"), which he mentions in his prologue. The text was not widely read during Thegan's lifetime but became far more popular during the reign of Charles the Bald. Rosamund McKitterick has suggested that this can be seen as part of the preoccupation of later Carolingian kings to construct a historical image for themselves. Indeed, Thegan's text is most frequently found as part of manuscripts containing texts such as the Royal Frankish Annals, genealogies of the Carolingians and a history of the Trojans, and very often the Vita Hludovici of the anonymous author known as The Astronomer."
836 Vikings sack Utrecht and Antwerp
833: Louis I the Pious temporarily deposed at Soissons. "On 13 November 833, Ebbo of Rheims presided over a synod in the Church of Saint Mary in Soissons which deposed Louis and forced him to publicly confess many crimes, none of which he had, in fact, committed. In return, Lothair gave Ebbo the Abbey of Saint Vaast. Men like Rabanus Maurus, Louis' younger half-brothers Drogo and Hugh, and Emma, Judith's sister and Louis the German's new wife, worked on the younger Louis to make peace with his father, for the sake of unity of the empire. The humiliation to which Louis was then subjected at Notre Dame in Compiègne turned the loyal barons of Austrasia and Saxony against Lothair, and the usurper fled to Burgundy, skirmishing with loyalists near Chalon-sur-Saône. Louis was restored the next year, on 1 March 834."
830 "At Wala's insistence that Bernard of Septimania was plotting against him, Pepin of Aquitaine led an army of Gascons, with the support of the Neustrian magnates, all the way to Paris. At Verberie, Louis the German joined him. At that time, the emperor returned from another campaign in Brittany to find his empire at war with itself. He marched as far as Compiègne, an ancient royal town, before being surrounded by Pepin's forces and captured. Judith was incarcerated at Poitiers and Bernard fled to Barcelona.
829 Date of last events recorded in the Annales regni Francorum (the Royal Frankish Annals); also Annales Laurissenses maiores and German: Reichsannalen). "Latin annals composed in Carolingian Francia, recording year-by-year the state of the monarchy from 741 (the death of Mayor of the Palace Charles Martel) to 829 (the beginning of the crisis of Louis the Pious). Their authorship is unknown, though Wilhelm von Giesebrecht suggested that Arno of Salzburg was the author of an early section of the Annaes Laurissenses majores surviving in the copy at Lorsch Abbey. The Annals are believed to have been composed in successive sections by different authors, and then compiled.[1] The depth of knowledge regarding court affairs suggests that the annals were written by persons close to the king, and their initial reluctance to comment on Frankish defeats betrays an official design for use as Carolingian propaganda.[2] Though the information contained within is heavily influenced by authorial intent in favor of the Franks, the annals remain a crucial source on the political and military history of the reign of Charlemagne. Copies of the annals can be categorized into five classes, based on additions and revisions to the text."
829: Louis I the Pious, at Worms, gives Alemannia to his fourth son Charles with the title of king or duke (historians differ on this), thus enraging his son and co-emperor Lothair, whose promised share was thereby diminished. An insurrection was soon at hand. With the urging of the vengeful Wala and the cooperation of his brothers, Lothair accused Judith of having committed adultery with Bernard of Septimania, even suggesting Bernard to be the true father of Charles. Ebbo and Hildwin abandoned the emperor at that point, Bernard having risen to greater heights than either of them. Agobard, Archbishop of Lyon, and Jesse, bishop of Amiens, too, opposed the redivision of the empire and lent their episcopal prestige to the rebels."
824: Several Slav tribes in the north-western parts of Bulgaria acknowledged Louis's suzerainty and after he was reluctant to settle the matter peacefully with the Bulgarian ruler Omurtag, in 827 the Bulgarians attacked the Franks in Pannonia and regained their lands.
823: Judith gives birth to a son, who was named Charles (the future Charles the Bald). "The birth of this son damaged the Partition of Aachen, as Louis's attempts to provide for his fourth son met with stiff resistance from his older sons, and the last two decades of his reign were marked by civil war."
822: Louis I the Pious does penance at Attigny.
820: Louis I the Pious remarries, to to Judith, daughter of Welf, count of Altdorf.
818: Ermengarde, wife of Louis I the Pious, dies.
817: Partition of Aachen. Louis I the Pious nearly killed at collapse of wooden gallery at Aachen. Three months later he issues Ordinatio Imperii proclaiming his intent to divide his kingdom among his three sons by Ermengarde:
- Lothair (22 y.o.) was proclaimed and crowned co-emperor in Aachen by his father. He was promised the succession to most of the Frankish dominions (excluding the exceptions below), and would be the overlord of his brothers and cousin.
- Pepin (19 y.o.) was proclaimed King of Aquitaine, his territory including Gascony, the march around Toulouse, and the counties of Carcassonne, Autun, Avallon and Nevers.
- Louis, the youngest son (12 y.o.), was proclaimed King of Bavaria and the neighbouring marches.
816: Louis I the Pious crowned Holy Roman Emperor at Reims by Pope Stephen IV.
815: Louis I the Pious grants adminstrative powers to his two oldest sons by Ermengarde. "he sent his elder sons Lothair and Pepin to govern Bavaria and Aquitaine respectively, though without the royal titles.
after 814 Vita Karoli Magni, (Life of Charles the Great) a biography of Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor, written by Einhard. "The date of the work is uncertain, and a number of theories have been put forward. The inclusion of Charlemagne's will at the end of the work makes it fairly clear that it was written after his death in 814. The first reference to the work, however, comes in a letter to Einhard from Lupus of Ferrieres, which is dated to the mid-9th century. Dates have been suggested ranging from about 817 to 833, usually based on interpretations of the text in the political context of the first years of the reign of Louis the Pious and Louis's attitude to his father. No theory has yet emerged as an obvious frontrunner, and it is likely that debate will continue. ...the British historian Thomas Hodgkin said, "almost all our real, vivifying knowledge of Charles the Great is derived from Einhard, and that the Vita Karoli Magni is one of the most precious literary bequests of the early Middle Ages.""
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| Louis on a denarius from Sens, 818–823 (source) |
814: Death of Charles the Great (Charlemagne). His son Louis I the Pious becomes King of the Franks. " the only surviving adult son of Charlemagne and Hildegard, Louis became the sole ruler of the Franks after his father's death in 814, a position which he held until his death, save for the period 833–34, during which he was deposed. While at his villa of Doué-la-Fontaine, Anjou, Louis received news of his father's death. He rushed to Aachen and crowned himself emperor to shouts of Vivat Imperator Ludovicus by the attending nobles.'
813: Charles the Great designates his surviving son Louis, the future Louis I the Pious, as his sole heir, and makes him Co-Emperor. "Charlemagne initially intended to divide his Carolingian Empire between Louis and his brothers Pepin and Charles, who nevertheless died in quick succession in 810/11. On 10 September 813, Charlemagne designated Louis his successor and had him proclaimed co-emperor."
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| Obverse of a Charlemagne denier coined in Frankfurt from 812 to 814, today at the :Cabinet des Médailles in Paris. " "A denarius of Charlemagne dated c. 812 - 814 with the inscription KAROLVS IMP AVG (Karolus Imperator Augustus) (Latin)" |
812: Louis, son of Charles the Great, campaigns in Spain. Asserts Frankish authority on Pamplona and the Basques south of the Pyrenees.
810/811 Death of Pepin and Charles, sons of Charles the Great. Louis left as his only son.
806 Charles the Great issues Divisio Regnorum. "Charlemagne had slated Charles theYounger as his successor as emperor and chief king, ruling over the Frankish heartland of Neustria and Austrasia, while giving Pepin the Iron Crown of Lombardy, which Charlemagne possessed by conquest. To Louis's kingdom of Aquitaine, he added Septimania, Provence, and part of Burgundy.
805 Ermengarde, daughter-in-law to Charles the Great, gives birth to third son, the future Louis the German.
801 Frankish Army under Louis takes Barcelona. "Louis marched the entire army of his kingdom, including Gascons with their duke Sancho I of Gascony, Provençals under Leibulf, and Goths under Bera, over the Pyrenees and besieged it for two years, wintering there from 800 to 801, when it capitulated."
800 Charles the Great, King of the Franks, crowned Roman Emperor. by Pope Leo III at Old St. Peter's Basilica, Rome (Dec. 25). "the first recognized emperor in Western Europe since the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Charlemagne has been called the "Father of Europe" (Pater Europae), as he united most of Western Europe for the first time since the Roman Empire. His rule spurred the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of energetic cultural and intellectual activity within the Western Church. All Holy Roman Emperors up to the last Emperor Francis II, as well as both the French and German monarchies, considered their kingdoms to be descendants of Charlemagne's empire."
798 Ermengarde, daughter-in-law to Charles the Great, gives birth to second son, the future Pepin I of Aquitaine.
795 Ermengarde, daughter-in-law to Charles the Great, gives birth to first son, the future Lothair I in Altdorf, Bavaria.
c. 794–98 Marriage of Louis (age 16-20), son of Charles the Great, to Ermengarde of Hesbaye. "She was Frankish by birth, the daughter of one Count Ingerman of Hesbaye, a nephew of the Metz bishop Chrodegang, and Hedwig of Bavaria. About 794 Ermengarde married Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne, who since 781 ruled as a King of Aquitaine. He had already fathered two children, and Ermengarde may had been his concubine."
790s Viking raids begin in Britain.
782 Battle of Sünte. "a skirmish in 782 between Saxon rebels led by Widukind against a detachment of Frankish forces led by envoys of Charlemagne. The result was a victory for the Saxons, resulting in the deaths of four counts, 20 other noblemen, and two of the three leaders of the Frankish detachment. Shortly following the loss, Charlemagne had 4,500 rebels beheaded on a single day, in an event sometimes known as the Verden Massacre. The massacre occurred in Verden in what is now Lower Saxony, Germany. The event is attested in contemporary Frankish sources, including the Royal Frankish Annals."
781 Louis (3 y.o.) made King of Aquitaine by his father, Charles the Great. "Louis was sent there with regents and a court. Charlemagne constituted the sub-kingdom in order to secure the border of his kingdom after the destructive war against the Aquitanians and Basques under Waifer (capitulated c. 768) and later Hunald II, which culminated in the disastrous Battle of Roncesvalles (778). Charlemagne's intention was to see all his sons brought up as natives of their given territories, wearing the national costume of the region and ruling by the local customs. Thus were the children sent to their respective realms at so young an age. Each kingdom had its importance in keeping some frontier, Louis's was the Spanish March."
778 Hildegard, wife of Charles the Great, gives birth to son Louis (the future Louis I the Pious).
778 Battle of Rencevaux Pass. Basques defeat the Franks under Charles the Great in the Pyrenees. "The battle was later romanticized by oral tradition into a major conflict between Christians and Muslims even though it is unlikely that religion was a motive."
774 Charles the Great conquers the Kingdom of the Lombards.
772 Charles the Great destroys the Irminsul, a pagan idol of the Saxons. "The oldest chronicle describing an Irminsul refers to it as a tree trunk erected in the open air. The Old Norse form of Irmin is Jörmunr, which just like Yggr was one of the names of Odin. Yggdrasil ("Yggr's horse") was the yew or ash tree from which Odin sacrificed himself, and which connected the nine worlds. Jakob Grimm connects the name Irmin with Old Norse terms like iörmungrund ("great ground", i.e. the Earth) or iörmungandr ("great snake", i.e. the Midgard serpent). According to the Royal Frankish Annals (772AD), during the Saxon wars, Charlemagne is repeatedly described as ordering the destruction of the chief seat of their religion, an Irminsul.[6] The Irminsul is described as not being far from Heresburg (now Obermarsberg), Germany.[6] Jacob Grimm states that "strong reasons" point to the actual location of the Irminsul as being approximately 15 miles (24 km) away, in the Teutoburg Forest and states that the original name for the region "Osning" may have meant "Holy Wood."
771 Charles the Great becomes sole ruler of the Franks upon death of his brother, Carloman II.
768 Charles the Great crowned King of the Franks at Noyon. Co-ruler with his brother Carloman.
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