TheTreaty of Verdun (French:Traité de Verdun;German:Vertrag von Verdun), agreed to on 10 August 843, ended theCarolingian civil war and divided theCarolingian Empire betweenLothair I,Louis II andCharles II, the surviving sons of the emperorLouis I. The treaty was the culmination of negotiations lasting more than a year. It was the first in a series of partitions contributing to the dissolution of the empire created byCharlemagne and has been seen as foreshadowing the formation of many of the modern countries ofwestern Europe.
The treaty was the first of the four partition treaties of theCarolingian Empire, followed by the Treaties ofPrüm (855),Meerssen (870), andRibemont (880).
Following Charlemagne's death, Louis was made ruler of the Frankish Empire.Agobard, archbishop of Lyon, opposed the division of the empire, as he claimed that it would divide thechurch.[1] During his reign,Louis the Pious divided the empire so that each of his sons could rule over their own kingdom under the greater rule of their father. Louis’ eldest son,Lothair I, was given the title of emperor but because of several re-divisions by his father and the resulting revolts, he became much less powerful. When Louis died in 840, Lothair I claimed overlordship over the entirety of his father's kingdom in an attempt to reclaim the power he had at the beginning of his reign asemperor.[2] He also supported his nephewPepin II's claim toAquitaine, a large province in the west of theFrankish realm. Lothair's brother,Louis II, and his half-brotherCharles II refused to acknowledge Lothair'ssuzerainty and declared war against him.[2] After a bloody civil war, they defeated Lothair at theBattle of Fontenoy in 841 and sealed their alliance in 842 with theOaths of Strasbourg which declared Lothair unfit for the imperial throne, after which he became willing to negotiate a settlement.[3] The meeting happened shortly before August 10, as confirmed by a contemporary letter.[4][5]
In the settlement, Lothair (who had been named co-emperor in 817) retained his title as emperor, but it conferred only nominal overlordship of his brothers' lands.[6] His domain later became theLow Countries, the Rhineland west of the Rhine,Lorraine,Alsace,Burgundy,Provence, and the Kingdom of Italy (which covered the northern half of theItalian Peninsula). He also received the two imperial cities,Aachen andRome.
He was guaranteed the kingship of all lands to the east of theRhine (although not the Netherlands to the north of the Rhine) and to the north and east ofItaly, altogether called East Francia. It eventually became theHigh MedievalKingdom of Germany, the largest component of theHoly Roman Empire.[3]
After Lothair's death in 855, his eldest son,Louis II, inherited Italy and his father's claim to the Imperial throne.Upper Burgundy andLower Burgundy (Arles andProvence) passed to Lothair's third son,Charles of Provence. The remaining territory north of theAlps, which did not previously have a name, was inherited by Lothair's second son,Lothair II, and was then namedLotharingia (present dayLorraine) after him.
The division reflected an adherence to the oldFrankish custom ofpartible or divisible inheritance amongst a ruler's sons, rather thanprimogeniture (i.e., inheritance by the eldest son) which would soon be adopted by both Frankish kingdoms. Since Lotharingia combined lengthy and vulnerable land borders with poor internal communications as it was severed by theAlps, it was not a viable entity and soon fragmented. This made it difficult for a single ruler to reassemble Charlemagne's empire. OnlyCharles the Fat achieved this briefly.
In 855, the northern section became fragile Lotharingia, which becamedisputed by the more powerful states that evolved out of Francia Occidentalis (present dayFrance) and Francia Orientalis (present dayGermany). Generations of kings of France and Germany were unable to establish a firm rule over Lothair's kingdom.[9] While thenorth of Lotharingia was then composed ofindependent countries, thesouthern third of Lotharingia,Alsace-Lorraine, was traded back and forth betweenFrance andGermany from the 18th to the 20th century. In 1766, it passed to France after the death ofStanisław Leszczyński, who had acquired the region from the GermanHabsburgs by theTreaty of Vienna (1738) ending theWar of Polish Succession (1733–1738). In 1871, Alsace-Lorraine became German, after the victory ofPrussia and its German allies over the French in theFranco-Prussian War (1870–1871). In 1919, it became French again by theTreaty of Versailles (1919), following the French victory over the Germans inWorld War I (1914–1918). In 1940, Germany reannexed Alsace-Lorraine following Germany'sconquest of France. Finally, in 1945, afterWorld War II (1939–1945), Alsace-Lorraine was solidified as French territory, which it remains to this day, more than a thousand years after the Treaty of Verdun. The collapse of theMiddle Frankish Kingdom also compounded the disunity of the Italian Peninsula, which persisted into the 19th century.
