Lotharingia - Kingdom of Lotharingia

Kingdom of Lotharingia

In 855, when Lothair was on his deathbed at Prüm Abbey, he divided his kingdom between his three sons in the Treaty of Prüm. To the eldest, Louis II, went Italy, with the imperial title. To the youngest, Charles, still a minor, went Provence. To the second eldest and namesake of his father, Lothair II, went the remaining territories to the north of Provence, a kingdom which lacked ethnic or linguistic unity as much as Middle Francia as a whole had. Because of this lack of identity contemporaries were unsure what to call the kingdom and so it became regnum quondam Lotharii or Lotharii regnum ("kingdom Lothair's") and its inhabitants Lotharii (from Lotharius), Lotharienses (from Lothariensis), or Lotharingi (which gives the modern German Lothringen, which is the name of the province). The latter term, formed with the Germanic suffix -ing, indicating ancestral or familial relationships, gave rise to the Latin term Lotharingia (from the Latin suffix -ia, indicating a country) in the tenth century. Later terms like "Lorraine" and "Lothier" are derived from this Latin term.

When Lothair II died in 869 he left no legitimate children, but one illegitimate son, Hugh. The kings of East and West Francia, Louis the German and Charles the Bald, agreed to divided Lotharingia between them, and in 870 they came to an agreement at Meerssen. The western half of Lotharingia went to West Francia and the eastern half to East Francia. In 876 Charles invaded eastern Lotharingia but was defeated near Andernach by Louis. In 879 Louis's son, Louis the Younger, was invited by a faction of the West Frankish nobility to succeed Louis the Stammerer, Charles's son, on the throne. In response, Louis the Stammerer's sons, Carloman II and Louis III, ceded western Lotharingia to Louis. The border between the two kingdoms was established at Saint-Quentin the next year (880).

When in November 887 Arnulf of Carinthia called a council of the East Frankish nobility to depose Charles the Fat, who had succeeded to all the kingdoms of the Empire by 884, the Lotharingians were one of those who joined him. They elected Arnulf their king, possibly under coercion. Arnful was initially opposed by Guy III of Spoleto, who eventually made himself king in Italy, and by Rudolph of Auxerre, who had been elected king in the south of Lotharingia, in Transjurane Burgundy. Rudolph intended to make himself king over the whole of Lothair II's kingdom, but he had to content himself with a rump state. In 895 Arnulf appointed his illegitimate son Zwentibold King of Lotharingia. He ruled independently until he was overthrown and killed by a rebellious magnate in 900.