THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE FRANKISH EMPIRE

The life of the first united Europe was significant but short. Decomposition started under Louis the Pious, whose quarrelling sons imposed the division of the Treaty of Verdun of 843. The disintegration of the empire of the Franks took place in two phases. There was, to begin with, the division into France (the western Franks), Germany (the eastern Franks) and Lotharingia, Lothair's long, drawn-out middle kingdom, which eventually became part of Germany. So the old Frankish mother country gave birth to two great kingdoms, France and Germany. For a long time they both considered themselves as Frankish, and it is hard to decide when they finally realized that they were Franks no more, but French and German, and that the realm of Charlemagne belonged to the past. The regnum Italiae, the old kingdom of the Lombards, enjoyed a phase of independence, but already under King Otto I (d. 973) it came under German hegemony. The process of disintegration, started under Louis the Pious, did not, however, stop there. Even within the frontiers of the new kingdoms the weakening of unity continued, though not everywhere to the same extent. The German kings had to accept that several regions, where old ethnic feeling remained lively, achieved a good deal of autonomy under powerful ducal dynasties, the Stammesherzogtümer, or ethnic dukedoms. What happened in France went even further. Here royal authority came to be ignored altogether, because of the rise of separate states, which started in the late ninth century and led to the so-called principautés territoriales, the territorial principalities.