Treaty of Verdun (843): How Charlemagne's Empire Was Divided

The Treaty of Verdun, agreed in August 843 at Verdun on the River Meuse, divided the Carolingian Empire of Charlemagne between his three surviving grandsons: Lothar I, Louis the German and Charles the Bald. It ended a bitter civil war and split western Europe into three kingdoms, West Francia, Middle Francia and East Francia. West and East Francia later grew into France and Germany, while the disputed lands between them shaped European politics for more than a thousand years.

Background: the empire of Charlemagne

By 800, when the coronation of Charlemagne as emperor took place in Rome, the Franks ruled most of western and central Europe, from the Pyrenees and northern Spain to the Elbe, and from the North Sea to central Italy. The empire was held together by the ruler’s personal authority, a network of counts and bishops, and the shared Christian and Frankish identity of its elite.

Frankish custom, however, treated a kingdom as an inheritance to be shared among a ruler’s sons. Charlemagne himself had planned in 806 to divide his lands among three sons, but only one, Louis the Pious, outlived him. Louis inherited the whole empire in 814.

Causes: a family at war

In 817 Louis the Pious issued a decree known as the Ordinatio Imperii, which made his eldest son Lothar co-emperor and future overlord of his brothers. Pepin was to rule Aquitaine and Louis (later “the German”) Bavaria, both under Lothar’s authority. The aim was to keep the empire united under one emperor.

The plan unravelled after Louis’s second wife, Judith, gave birth to a son, Charles, in 823. Louis’s efforts to create a kingdom for Charles angered his older sons, who rebelled in 830 and again in 833. In 833 Louis was abandoned by his army at a place later called the Field of Lies, near Colmar, and forced to do public penance, though he was restored to power the following year.

Pepin of Aquitaine died in 838, and Louis gave much of Aquitaine to Charles, passing over Pepin’s son, Pepin II. When Louis the Pious died on 20 June 840, near Ingelheim on the Rhine, no settlement was accepted by all his heirs.

The civil war, 840–843

Lothar, as emperor, claimed authority over the whole empire under the terms of 817. Louis the German, based east of the Rhine, and Charles the Bald, in the west, refused to accept this. Pepin II joined Lothar in hope of winning Aquitaine.

On 25 June 841 the two sides met at the Battle of Fontenoy near Auxerre. Louis and Charles won a bloody victory, but Lothar escaped and continued to fight. On 14 February 842 the two younger brothers renewed their alliance in the Oaths of Strasbourg, sworn in both Romance and Germanic languages before their armies. Lothar was driven from Aachen and, with his support collapsing, agreed to talks.

In June 842 the three brothers met on an island in the Saône near Mâcon and agreed in principle to divide the empire into three roughly equal parts. A commission of about 120 nobles, 40 chosen by each king, was set up to survey the royal lands, churches and estates so that the shares could be balanced. Disputes and delays followed, but the final agreement was reached at Verdun in August 843.

The terms of the division

No official text of the treaty survives, and its terms are known from chroniclers, especially the Annals of St Bertin. The broad outlines are clear.

Charles the Bald received West Francia, the lands west of a line roughly following the Scheldt, Meuse, Saône and Rhône rivers. This included Neustria, much of Burgundy west of the Saône, Aquitaine and the Spanish March around Barcelona.

Louis the German received East Francia, the lands east of the Rhine, including Saxony, Franconia, Swabia and Bavaria. He also gained the dioceses of Speyer, Worms and Mainz west of the Rhine; the chronicler Regino of Prüm later said this was for the sake of their wine.

Lothar kept the imperial title and received a long middle kingdom, Middle Francia, stretching from Frisia on the North Sea through the Low Countries, the Rhineland, Alsace, Burgundy and Provence to Italy. It included the two imperial cities of Aachen and Rome.

The aim was balance rather than geography. Each king needed enough royal estates, monasteries and bishoprics to reward his followers, and the heartlands of Frankish power between the Meuse and the Rhine were shared out carefully. Lothar’s share, in particular, kept the prestigious centres of the empire but was long, narrow and hard to defend.

Pepin II of Aquitaine received nothing, although he continued to hold parts of Aquitaine for years. The brothers also promised peace and mutual support, but each was now sovereign in his own kingdom.

Key people

• Lothar I (795–855): Eldest son of Louis the Pious, emperor from 817 as co-ruler and from 840 in his own right. He kept the imperial title and the middle kingdom.
• Louis the German (c. 806–876): King of Bavaria from 817 and of East Francia from 843. His long reign laid the foundations of the later German kingdom.
• Charles the Bald (823–877): Youngest son of Louis the Pious, king of West Francia from 843 and emperor from 875. He is often seen as a founding figure of the French monarchy.
• Pepin II of Aquitaine (c. 823–after 864): Grandson of Louis the Pious, excluded from the settlement, who fought on for Aquitaine.
• Nithard (c. 795–844): Grandson of Charlemagne and supporter of Charles, whose history of the civil war is the main eyewitness account.

Consequences

The treaty ended the idea of a single Frankish empire ruled by one man. The imperial title remained, but it became a mark of prestige rather than real power over the other kingdoms.

Middle Francia proved the weakest part. When Lothar died in 855, the Treaty of Prüm split it among his three sons: Louis II took Italy, Lothar II the northern lands later called Lotharingia, and Charles the lands of Provence. After Lothar II died without a legitimate heir, his uncles divided Lotharingia between them by the Treaty of Meerssen in 870, and the Treaty of Ribemont in 880 shifted the border again in favour of East Francia.

Within each kingdom, the treaty also changed the balance between kings and nobles. To win and keep support during the civil war, the brothers had granted lands and offices generously, and great aristocratic families became more independent. In West Francia, Charles the Bald had to negotiate with his nobles at assemblies such as Coulaines in late 843, where he promised to respect their rights and honours.

The empire was briefly reunited under Charles the Fat between 884 and 887, but after his deposition it broke apart for good. Meanwhile the divided kingdoms struggled to deal with Viking attacks, including the Viking sack of Paris in 845, only two years after Verdun.

Myths and facts

• Myth: The Treaty of Verdun divided the empire along language lines. Fact: Language played little part. The shares were designed to give each brother a fair portion of royal estates and churches, and many people in each kingdom spoke different languages.
• Myth: Verdun was the birth of France and Germany as nations. Fact: The kings saw themselves as Franks sharing a family inheritance. The French and German kingdoms took shape gradually over the 10th and 11th centuries.
• Myth: The treaty text has survived. Fact: Only chroniclers’ summaries survive, so some border details are uncertain.

Legacy

Historians often describe Verdun as the starting point of the separate histories of France and Germany. In 1843 the millennium of the treaty was celebrated in Germany as the founding moment of a German kingdom, at a time when German nationalism was growing.

The middle lands created at Verdun, including the Low Countries, Lorraine, Alsace, Burgundy and northern Italy, became some of the most disputed territories in Europe. Rivalry over them ran through the wars of the Middle Ages and early modern period, and through the conflicts between France and Germany in 1870–1871, 1914–1918 and 1939–1945. Some writers have seen the founding countries of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, roughly covering Charlemagne’s old empire, as an echo of the world before Verdun, though this is a comparison rather than a direct link.

Timeline

• 800, 25 December: Charlemagne is crowned emperor in Rome.
• 814, 28 January: Charlemagne dies; Louis the Pious inherits the empire.
• 817: The Ordinatio Imperii makes Lothar co-emperor and heir.
• 823, 13 June: Charles the Bald is born.
• 840, 20 June: Louis the Pious dies; civil war breaks out.
• 841, 25 June: Louis and Charles defeat Lothar at Fontenoy.
• 842, 14 February: The Oaths of Strasbourg seal their alliance.
• 842, June: The brothers agree in principle to a three-way division.
• 843, August: The Treaty of Verdun is concluded.
• 870: The Treaty of Meerssen divides Lotharingia.

Why it matters

The Treaty of Verdun turned Charlemagne’s empire into separate kingdoms and drew the rough outlines of western Europe’s later states. Its unstable middle kingdom left a belt of contested lands between France and Germany whose fate shaped European history down to the 20th century.